that particular bill, but he said nothing. “What
could a fellow say ?” He went on, and his education went on.
This was the session when the present issues of New Jersey politics were raised in their present form. Mark Fagan, the Mayor of Jersey City, raised them. The Christian Mayor went to Trenton with his corporation counsel, George L. Record, to ask in the name of his people for relief from the unendurable burden thrown upon them by the railroads. The railroads, with all the best (terminal, water-front) property in the city, paid practically no taxes to the city, only to the state, and then, on a valuation fixed by their own state board, at rates lower than the rates on other property. Record had drawn a bill to tax railroad property locally and at local rates. They were Republicans, Fagan and Record, and their party was in control of the state, absolutely; so they applied to the leaders of their party, among them, of course, to the Honourable Everett Colby. He liked Mayor Fagan, he says; he didn’t like Record, but Mark Fagan, the “man of the people,” intent only upon the needs of his city, walked straight into the heart of the rich young gentleman who, so far as he knew, was bent only upon a political career for personal glory. “I liked that man,” he says, “and the condition of
