Right here appeared that insidious influence which we have seen defeating or opposing reform in other cities—the interference of respectable men to save their friends. In the Twenty-second Ward the Democrats nominated a director (now deceased) of the First National Bank and a prominent man socially and financially. John Colvin, one of the “Big Four,” a politician who had gone away rich to Europe and was returning to go back into politics, also was running. The League preferred John Maynard Harlan, a son of Justice Harlan, and they elected him. The bank of which the respectable Democratic candidate was a director was the bank of which Lyman J. Gage, of the League, was president. All that the League had against this man was that he was the proprietor of a house leased for questionable purposes, and his friends, including Mr. Gage, were highly indignant. Mr. Gage pleaded and protested. The committee was “sick of pulls” and they made short work of this most “respectable” pull. They had “turned down” politicians on no better excuse, and they declared they were not going to overlook in the friend of their friends what they condemned in some poor devil who had no friends. There were many such cases, then and later; this sort of thing has never ceased and it never will cease; reform must always “go too far,” if it is to go at all, for it is up there in the “too far” that corruption has its source. The League, by meeting it early, and “spotting it,” as Mr. Cole said, not only discouraged such interference, but fixed its own character and won public confidence. For everything in those days was open. The League works more quietly now, but then Cole was talking it all out, plain to the verge of brutality, forcible to the limit of language, and honest to utter ruthlessness. He blundered and they all made mistakes, but their blundering only helped them, for while the errors were plain errors, the fairness of mind that rejected an Edward M. Stanwood, for example, was plain too. Stanwood, a respectable business man, had served as alderman, but his re-election was advised against by the League because he had “voted with the gang.” A high public official, three judges, and several other prominent men interceded on the ground that “in every instance where he is charged with having voted for a so-called boodle ordinance, it was not done corruptly, but that he might secure votes for some meritorious measure.” The League answered in this style: “We regard this defense, which is put forward with confidence by men of your standing, as painful evidence of the low standard by which the public conduct of city officials has come to be measured by good citizens. Do you not know that this is one of the most insidious and common forms of legislative corruption?” Mr. Stanwood was defeated.