My story . re are people who will notbelieve it now. But the citizens later had the humilia-tion of seeing the property which our company had of-fered to the city for fifteen millions sold to other privateinterests for twenty-five millions. Then Detroit realizedthe chance it had missed and couldnt avoid seeing thatI was more interested in municipal ownership than I wasin personal profits — a fact that Pingree knew all thetime. But any attempt on our part to have made thepublic believe this would have brought ridicule upon us,so I allowed myself to be misunderstood. Pingree was charged with bei
My story . re are people who will notbelieve it now. But the citizens later had the humilia-tion of seeing the property which our company had of-fered to the city for fifteen millions sold to other privateinterests for twenty-five millions. Then Detroit realizedthe chance it had missed and couldnt avoid seeing thatI was more interested in municipal ownership than I wasin personal profits — a fact that Pingree knew all thetime. But any attempt on our part to have made thepublic believe this would have brought ridicule upon us,so I allowed myself to be misunderstood. Pingree was charged with being a political boss, buthe wasnt one, for a political boss is a man whose wordis his capital and it must be absolutely good. Pingreewas a political idol. He was always in a fight and alwayson the popular side. Thoroughly honest and trustworthyexcept when he was in a political contest, then as he saidof himself he never hesitated to promise the same placeto more than one man. Once before a whole roomful of. HAZEN S. PINGREE THE LESSONS OF MONOPOLY 97 people he stated that he was out of ammunition, for hehad promised every job at least twice. After Pingree became Governor I twitted him once onone of his public messages, saying: Thats a nice message, that Is! There isnt a demo-cratic line in it. Listantly he came back with this: Well, Ill have you know Pm a Republican Gov-ernor. At another time when someone complained that theGovernor had advanced different arguments on the samepublic question on two different occasions, he replied: You are the most unreasonable damn fool I ever course the second argument isnt like the first one, butPll have you understand Pve changed secretaries in themeantime. One of the last things Pingree did was to collaboratein the writing of a book about the Boer War which hededicated to me. It was never published, but the manu-script with his inscription was sent to me after his death. XI MORE LESSONS OF MONOPOLY While they were still Interested i
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