that, if it were once tried, the result that would prevent a repetition of the trial would be the slow but sure reduction of the productive power of the individual worker. With every inclination to make wages rise, the state would be baffled in its efforts by increasing population and by the check on improvements of method and on the accumulation of capital. The sources of gain for labor would dwindle till the "iron law" would begin to assert itself, and a state that would gladly make workers rich would then be unable to keep them out of misery.

Is there no further recourse? There is one; and it has the advantage of being in harmony with the spirit of our people, with the principles of common law and also with the economic tendencies that have made our present state a tolerable one. It is to give to potential competition greater effectiveness — that is, to give a fair field and no favor to the man who is disposed to become an independent producer, leaving him wholly at the mercy of fair competition but shielding him from that which is unfair. Let the trust crush him, if he cannot produce goods as cheaply as it can; but let him bring the trust to terms, if he can produce them more cheaply. This puts the trust in a position where its security will depend, not on its power to destroy competitors unfairly, but on its power to meet them fairly.

John Bates Clark, Trusts, in Political Science Quarterly, June, 1900 (Boston, etc.), XV, 187-190.

202. The Machine and the Boss (1900)

BY BIRD SIM COLER

Coler was elected comptroller of New York City on the Tammany ticket at the first municipal election under the Greater New York charter. The office is one of great importance and responsibility, and has been administered by Coler wisely and independently of political control. - Bibliography: R. C. Brooks, Bibliography of Municipal Administration and City Conditions (Municipal Affairs, 1897, I, No. 1); Bowker and Iles, Reader's Guide in Economic, Social, and Political Science, 99–101, 115-116.

TH

HE political machine is sometimes made odious to good citizens, but it is never wholly bad in itself. It is a fixture in American politics, and while it may be broken and rebuilt, cleaned and reformed, it can not be eliminated. The men who rail loudest against it, as a rule, are ever ready to use it or its broken parts as stepping-stones to place and power, even to a boss-ship. Its reputation for evil is in every case

due to party leaders who have used it for personal purposes and made of it an instrument to defeat the wishes of the people who created it. Contrary to popular belief, a party leader can not make a political machine. The party makes the machine, the machine makes the leader, and then the latter makes himself a boss. A leader of a party is never a boss, because leadership implies followers, and a boss does not lead: he drives, and the machine is his vehicle, the individual members of it his driven cattle. The corrupt political machine of to-day, controlled by a boss, is contrary to the American system of government, and were it not a terrible reality its creation would be deemed an impossibility. It is, in its present state of perfection, rule of the people by the individual for the boss, his relatives, and friends. It is the most complete political despotism ever known, and yet the political machine on which the boss rises as dictator and despot is based on the fundamental principle of democracy - that system of government wherein all men are supposed to be equal and every voter a sovereign. It is the multiplicity of voting sovereigns that makes the machine a necessity for concerted political action; and when sovereignty has been centralized by organization, the great majority of our constitutional rulers go about their private affairs, careless of their rights and powers until their personal or property interests are affected by the ukase of a party boss. For a century the division of the voters into political parties has been a part of our system of being governed by the man who runs the machine of the party in office. This division has been carried up or down, according to the point of view, from national politics to the election of township constables. When the sovereigns are divided on party lines the work of partisan organization is made easy, and the majority need not think or act for themselves; they can leave all such details to the committees. The building of the political machine begins whenever a question of policy seems to demand united party action. The frame is laid in the party caucus or mass meeting, where every voter may be heard. There the necessity for organization is made apparent, and a committee is created. That is the work of the voters of a party in a particular locality, and the first committee is the creation of a majority. So far the plan of procedure is perfect. It is essentially democratic majority rule. But the committee is too large, and a subcommittee is detailed to carry on the work of the organization. From a subcommittee the task passes to individuals — one, two, or three

and behold, in a day a political machine stands complete, awaiting the guiding hand of a boss!

The committee of the township, county, town, or city mass meetings develops into a small machine, which for a time does its work so well that the people are pleased. When the time comes for holding another mass meeting the voters do not turn out. They are busy with their own affairs, and their confidence in the committee is unshaken. Then the machine grows stronger, and the leader of the first meeting is the boss of the second, dictating nominations and dividing patronage. The smaller committees are represented in the State or city organization, and along the same lines a larger machine is built. It is merely the local and political interests and ambitions merged into one harmonious whole the machine finished and ready for business.

The party organization created in this way is not wrong in itself, and has no power to move contrary to the wishes of its creators. It is the mechanism of a party ready for work; but there must be a guiding hand, a directing force provided by the voters as a whole or by a boss. It is only when the rank and file of the party cease to take an active interest in the machine they have created that it ceases to obey their wishes and becomes the tool of the despot. To maintain the organization necessary to keep a political party alive and get out a full vote a large amount of routine work must be done by some one. Men of business have no taste for this labor, and are glad to leave it to those who have no other occupation. When a man takes up politics as a profession usually he expects to make money out of it, and to make money he must get into office himself or put his friends there. It is perfectly natural that the professional politician should become unscrupulous as to means to accomplish his end.

When civic pride and public spirit are withdrawn from the party organization, the modern political machine remains. It stands before the public disguised as a committee; but every member is there for business, and his first thought is to get all he can out of the party before he is succeeded by some one more unscrupulous. In the scramble for spoils that follows the boss is developed. He is a man with enough force of character to bend the other members of the organization to his will and make the machine a weapon of offense and defense. Once a boss is firmly established in his place his first thought is to take care of the machine, to keep it in good working order, for without it he can not longer retain power.

Bird S. Coler, Municipal Government (New York, D. Appleton & Co., 1900), 189-194.

CHAPTER XXXIV-SOCIAL PROBLEMS

203. Political Conditions in the South (1878)

BY SIR GEORGE CAMPBELL, K.C.S.I.

Campbell entered the civil service of India, and rose to be a member of the council of India and later a member of Parliament. He visited the United States in 1878. This extract is from the book in which he recorded his impressions. - Bibliography: Commissioner of Education, Report for 1893-1894, I, 1038-1061; Southern Society for the Study of Race Conditions, Race Problems of the South, 224-240.

I

HAD. . . an opportunity of conversing with a coloured preacher, a clever and influential man. He seems, however, very extreme in his views. He says that during the election there was gross intimidation, and much unfair influence, but in spite of it all the blacks voted Republican as solid as ever. Nevertheless, the boxes were stuffed and the majority stolen. The election commissioners are all on one side, and so are the newspapers, and they openly published violent threats. . . .

I gather that the United States election supervisors were a poor lot— often coloured men; and they were frequently hustled and insulted. One of them was arrested on some frivolous pretext. According to one Northerner nothing but United States troops at every polling-place will prevent a strong and embittered minority from triumphing over a weak majority. In this part of the country the Republican or Radical party is dead for the present. The victory of the whites is now so complete that there is certainly peace such as there was not before. . . .

I paid a visit to my namesake Mr. C, the independent Democrat, who stood for State Senator for this district, but was defeated. He is a lawyer, and all agree that he is a very superior man. I found him very moderate, and not at all inclined to be vituperative, although the election was bitterly contested. He says that he represented the principle of Conciliation against those who would not yield anything. The election was won by simple cheating; that is, by stuffing the ballotboxes. At one polling-place not more than a tho voted, but there

were three thousand five hundred papers in the box. There was not much intimidation, but only cheating. . . .

As a general result of all that I have been able to learn about the elections in this part of the country, I may say that there does not seem to be the least doubt that they were won by the most wholesale cheating. That is avowed in the most open way. Most people seem to praise the negroes, and to be on very good terms with them; but they all admit that, while the blacks will do almost anything else for them, when it comes to voting they cannot be influenced, and insist on voting with their party. At one place that I visited, where a considerable number of Republican votes were recorded, an old Democratic gentleman jocularly remarked that this had been the only honest poll in the whole district. They say the Republicans made the election law to suit their own purpose of cheating, and had arranged the electoral districts so as to swamp the whites with black votes. Now they are hoist with their own petard, and serve them right. The blacks seem to have accepted their defeat as a foregone conclusion, and therefore it is that they are quite good-natured over it. Perhaps, too, they really have to some degree accepted Wade Hampton and his policy, and are not so anxious to fight as they otherwise might be. Both parties seem to assume as a matter of course that whichever controls the machinery of the elections will win the elections. I am told that Wade Hampton generally appointed two Democrats and one Radical as election commissioners; that the radical was always corrupt and could be bought, and that therefore the Democrats always had it their own way. The Democrats of Charleston have done something to conciliate those blacks who accept the Democratic ticket. In this district seventeen members are sent up to the State Assembly, and of these three are Democratic blacks. The county officers are whites, but there are some blacks in the Charleston municipality. For the State Assembly the Republicans adopted a fusion ticket, including the five best of the Democrats.

Hitherto three Congressional districts in the black part of South Carolina have been represented by black men, and I am told that they were all very fair specimens. The representative of the Charleston district was a well-educated negro, from the North. The Georgetown district was represented by an extremely polished black gentleman, who was formerly a very popular barber in Charleston, and is not at all a bad sort of person. . . .

I observe that in a great number of the elections for county and local