This primer lesson in politics, known to all men who have opportunity to learn and who see fit to seize the opportunity, was of course known to George Helm. But he did not content himself with a dry, tiresome, “courteous” statement of the fact. He brought it home to the people of those three counties by showing precisely what Judge Powers had done in his seven years as the people’s high officer of justice--by relating in detail the favors he had granted to the railways, both steam and trolley, to the monopolies in every necessity of life. He also gave an account of Judge Powers’s material prosperity, his rapid rise to riches in those seven years, and the flourishing condition of his relatives and intimate friends, the men owning stock in the railway and other monopolies. In a word, the young candidate made what is known as a “blatherskite” campaign. In his youth and simplicity he imagined that, as a candidate, it was his duty to tell the truth to the people. He did not know the difference between the two kinds of truth--decent and indecent--decent truth that gives everybody a comfortable sense of general depravity, and indecent truth that points out specific instances of depravity, giving names, dates and places. “Let those who will benefit by Judge Powers’s notion of justice and law vote for him,” said Helm. “I ask those who will benefit by my notion of law and justice to vote for me.” The Democratic machine hastened to disavow Helm’s plainness of speech. The newspapers, Democratic no less than Republican, ignored him. But the scandal would not down. The news of Helm’s charges--of his unparliamentary statements of fact--spread from village to village, from farm to farm. Within a week it was no longer necessary for him to distribute handbills and call at farm-houses to announce his meetings. Wherever he went he found a crowd waiting to hear his simple conversational appeal to common-sense--and, after hearing, bursting into cheers. In private, in handshaking and talking with the farmers and villagers, he was all humor, full of homely, witty stories and jests. But the moment he stood up as the candidate addressing the people, the face lost its humor lines, the eyes their twinkle, and he uttered one plain, serious sentence after another, each making a point against Judge Powers. The strong homely face grew rapidly thinner. The deep-set gray eyes sank still deeper beneath the overhanging brows. As for the frock suit, it soon became a wretched exhibit from a rag bag. The “respectable” people--that is, those owning the stocks and bonds of Judge Powers’s protégé companies--laughed at the fantastic figure, roving about in the mud-stained buggy. But--“the common people heard him gladly.”