But notice what they didn’t do. Fumblers as they were, they didn’t talk of more exposures. “Heavens, we know enough,” said one. They didn’t go to the Legislature for a new charter. They needed one, they need one to-day, and badly, too, but the men who didn’t know what, but did know what not to do, wouldn’t let them commit the folly of asking one corrupt legislature to legislate another corrupt legislature out of existence. And they didn’t wait till the next mayoralty election to elect a “business mayor” who should give them good government. They were bound to accept the situation just as it was—the laws, the conditions, the political circumstances, all exactly as they were—and, just as a politician would, go into the next fight whatever it was and fight. All they needed was a fighter. So it was moved to find a man, one man, and let this man find eight other men, who should organize the “Municipal Voters’ League.” There were no instructions; the very name was chosen because it meant nothing and might mean anything. But the man! That was the problem. There were men, a few, but the one man is always hard to find. There was William Kent, rich, young, afraid of nothing and always ready, but he was an alderman, and the wise ones declared that the Nine must not only be disinterested, but must appear so. William Kent wouldn’t do. Others were suggested; none that would do. “How about George E. Cole?” “Just the man,” said Mr. Gage, and all knew the thought was an inspiration. George E. Cole described himself to me as a “second-class business man.” Standing about five feet high, he knows he is no taller; but he knows that that is tall enough. Cole is a fighter. Nobody discovered it, perhaps, till he was past his fiftieth year. Then one Martin B. Madden found it out. Madden, a prominent citizen, president of the Western Stone Company, and a man of tremendous political power, was one of the business men who went into the Council to bring order out of the chaos of corruption. He was a Yerkes leader. Madden lived in Cole’s ward. His house was in sight of Cole’s house. “The sight of it made me hot,” said Cole, “for I knew what it represented.” Cole had set out to defeat Madden, and he made a campaign which attracted the attention of the whole town. Madden was re-elected, but Cole had proved himself, and that was what made Lyman J. Gage say that Cole was “just the man.” “You come to me as a Hobson’s choice,” said Mr. Cole to the committee, “as a sort of forlorn hope. All right,” he added, “as a last chance, I’ll take it.”