Our city had always been fairly well governed and had no great problems. Taxes had been increasing. I was able to reduce them some and pay part of the debt, so that I left the net obligations chargeable to taxes at about $100,000. The salaries of teachers were increased. My work commended itself to the people, so that running against the same opponent for reelection my majority was much increased. I celebrated this event by taking my family to Montpelier where my father was serving in the Vermont Senate. Of all the honors that have come to me I still cherish in a very high place the confidence of my friends and neighbors in making me their Mayor. Remaining in one office long did not appeal to me, for I was not seeking a public career. My heart was in the law. I thought a couple of terms in the Massachusetts Senate would be helpful to me, so when our Senator retired I sought his place in the fall of 1911 and was elected. The winter in Boston I did not find very satisfactory. I was lonesome. My old friends in the House were gone. The Western Massachusetts Club that had its headquarters at the Adams House, where most of us lived that came from beyond the Connecticut, was inactive. The Committees I had, except the Chairmanship of Agriculture, did not interest me greatly, and to crown my discontent a Democratic Governor sent in a veto, which the Senate sustained, to a bill authorizing the New Haven Railroad to construct a trolley system in Western Massachusetts. But as chairman of a special committee I had helped settle the Lawrence strike, secured the appointment of a commission that resulted in the passage of a mothers’ aid or maternity bill at the next session, and I was made chairman of a recess committee to secure better transportation for rural communities in the western part of the Commonwealth. During the summer we did a large amount of work on that committee and made a very full and constructive report at the opening of the General Court in 1913. This was the period that the Republican party was divided between Taft and Roosevelt, so that Massachusetts easily went for Wilson. But in the three-cornered contest I was reelected to the Senate. It was in my second term in the Senate that I began to be a force in the Massachusetts Legislature. President Greenwood made me chairman of the Committee on Railroads, which I very much wanted, because of my desire better to understand business affairs, and also put me on the important Committee on Rules. I made progress because I studied subjects sufficiently to know a little more about them than any one else on the floor. I did not often speak but talked much with the Senators personally and came in contact with many of the business men of the state. The Boston Democrats came to be my friends and were a great help to me in later times.