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The outcome, then, is that an aspirant for political power must either be very rich or must work the corporations which are seeking favors. If he can turn legislative privileges to profit, and so make himself indispensable to somebody, he will have money to do business on. One man cannot run this alone, for one man does not make a Legislature. Hence we must have leaders or ‘bosses’ as you would call them, so that whenever a great corporation wants something which it is willing to pay for, it can go directly to the boss, and he in turn can parcel out the money to such of his followers as are willing in state Legislatures, city Councils, and the national Congress to vote as he directs, or to earn the money. This is a plain business proposition.”
Thus we are asked to return to the spoils system in the interest of the public virtue, and strange to say, I have known cases in which this appeal has had some effect upon otherwise sensible persons. Their reasoning is this. We must have political parties. A party must have an organization. An organization must have workers to get out the vote. The workers must have reward. That reward must be either in the shape of office or of money. If you take away the office, only money remains. And then it will require more and more money.
This reasoning is not without plausibility to a certain point. We must have political parties, and a party in order to be effective must have an organization and workers. This is true. But what kind of an organization and what kind of workers must a party have? Is it necessary that the organization and the workers should consist of a lot of mercenaries who put themselves to party work only for the purpose of making politics profitable to themselves personally? Some people will say that only that class of persons can be found willing to devote themselves to the drudgery of party work. This is plausible. But is it true? We have had political parties in this country before the offices were distributed among party workers with every change of administration, and before much money was used in elections to bring out the voters; and yet parties were as active and party contests as spirited, and the vote was as full then as now. We know that in other countries which have constitutional government, and political parties, and elections, but no distribution of offices as
