"It is absurd for us to suppose," the greatest lawyer in New York told him, "that we can end the trust by passing laws. The trusts are a step in social evolution, and you can’t successfully legislate against evolution. When the trusts can’t hire the law’s makers, they will still be able to hire better lawyers to build new trusts within the law than such lawyers as the voters can afford to elect to Congress to frame new anti-trust laws. The laws against the trusts are of no more practical use than the laws in favor of the unions." Luke returned to Forbes with this dictum. "Can’t we get some of the outside firms to join us?" asked Luke. Forbes did not approve the idea. "I have had several offers of the kind," he said, "and I am suspicious of them. I think the firms that made them weren’t really independent. I think it was a move to let the trust into our concern. Besides, this house has always been a Forbes house, and it must remain that or go down honorably." "There’ll be trouble," Luke prophesied. "I think I know something about the trade," Forbes said: he had moments when he did not wholly like the superior ability shown by Luke in securing the Ruysdael loan. "This is my part of the Business." Luke was too much occupied by the political campaign not to acknowledge that, weak or strong, Forbes must be left in control of the firm. The battle for votes was four-cornered without being square; it was hot and bitter. On the issue of the district-attorneyship, the Democrats and Progressives were helping Leighton and the Republicans by directing all their energies against Luke and the Municipal Reform League. They raised high the accusation of demagogism and appealed to business large and small to rescue credit from the hurts that Huber threatened. Leighton, supported by the full strength of his organization, was pretending that Luke’s disaffection was that of a discharged servant; the District-Attorney pleaded for a safe and sane conduct of the office of the public prosecutor. Although the League’s lesser workers undertook the task of canvassing the city, treating with politicians and employers, advertising, arguing, pleading, promising, and threatening, doing all the mysterious multitude of things that are necessary to practical politics; although, too, the other candidates and the volunteer and hired speakers performed heavy shares of the speech-making from cart-ends and stages, on street and in hall, Luke was constantly being called on to help his associates and had more than enough in his own department to keep him busy from the time when he got out of bed of a morning until, often the next morning, he got in again.