At Independent Headquarters, then, that autumn, political meetings were held, in which local affairs--the street-car situation especially and the relation it bore to the machines of political parties--were discussed. Because of those changes the legislature was always making in the government of cities, three councilman at large were to be elected. This was in the year 1904, in the midst of a national campaign. Roosevelt was running for president for his second--or his first term, depending on the point of view--and three of those men who had voted for that street railway ordinance, and were ready to vote to pass it over the mayor’s veto, were candidates on the Republican ticket for councilmen at large. The Independents who had marched with Johnson Thurston determined to nominate a city ticket, and they honored me by offering me the place at the head of that ticket as their candidate for councilman at large. I was writing another novel just then and battling as usual against interruptions, and so I begged off; it was not the campaign I feared, but, as I told them, the fear that I should be elected. We nominated a ticket, and went into the campaign, speaking every night, and in November, though Roosevelt carried the city by fifteen thousand, our candidates for councilmen at large were elected. Clearly, then, the non-partizan movement had not wholly died with Golden Rule Jones; his soul, like the soul of John Brown, was marching on, and still somehow led by him, and inspired by his spirit, there had sprung forth, like Greek soldiers from the dragon’s teeth, in Toledo a democratic municipal movement. First of all the cities in America, she had taken the initial step in freeing herself, the step all cities in America must take if they would free themselves from their masters--that of non-partizan municipal elections. XXXII