are boodle yells. The Fourth of July oration is the “front” of graft. There is no patriotism in it, but treason. It is part of the game. The grafters call for cheers for the flag, “prosperity,” and “the party,” just as a highwayman commands “hands up,” and while we are waving and shouting, they float the flag from the nation to the party, turn both into graft factories, and prosperity into a speculative boom to make “weak hands,” as the Wall Street phrase has it, hold the watered stock while the strong hands keep the property. “Blame us, blame anybody, but praise the people,” this, the politician’s advice, is not the counsel of respect for the people, but of contempt. By just such palavering as courtiers play upon the degenerate intellects of weak kings, the bosses, political, financial, and industrial, are befuddling and befooling our sovereign American citizenship; and—likewise—they are corrupting it.
And it is corruptible, this citizenship. “I know what Parks is doing,” said a New York union workman, “but what do I care. He has raised my wages. Let him have his graft!” And the Philadelphia merchant says the same thing: “The party leaders may be getting more than they should out of the city, but that doesn’t hurt me. It may raise taxes a little, but I can stand 14that. The party
