nominating candidates, and
dictating to officials; in return for their "services" they sold offices
and privileges. It was alleged that mayors and councils had bargained
away for private benefit street railway and other franchises. It was
asserted that many powerful labor unions were dominated by men who
blackmailed employers. Some critics specialized in descriptions of the
poverty, slums, and misery of great cities. Others took up "frenzied
finance" and accused financiers of selling worthless stocks and bonds to
an innocent public. Still others professed to see in the accumulations
of millionaires the downfall of our republic.

=The Attack on "Invisible Government."=--Some even maintained that the
control of public affairs had passed from the people to a sinister
minority called "the invisible government." So eminent and conservative
a statesman as the Hon. Elihu Root lent the weight of his great name to
such an imputation. Speaking of his native state, New York, he said:
"What is the government of this state? What has it been during the forty
years of my acquaintance with it? The government of the Constitution?
Oh, no; not half the time or half way.... From the days of Fenton and
Conkling and Arthur and Cornell and Platt, from the days of David B.
Hill down to the present time, the government of the state has presented
two different lines of activity: one, of the constitutional and
statutory officers of the state and the other of the party leaders; they
call them party bosses. They call the system--I don't coin the
phrase--the system they call 'invisible government.' For I don't know
how many years Mr. Conkling was the supreme ruler in this state. The
governor did not count, the legislature did not count, comptrollers and
secretaries of state and what not did not count. It was what Mr.
Conkling said, and in a great outburst of public rage he was pulled
down. Then Mr. Platt ruled the state; for nigh upon twenty years he
ruled it. It was not the governor; it was not the legislature; it was
Mr. Platt. And the capital was not here [in Albany]; it was at 49
Broadway; Mr. Platt and his lieutenants. It makes no difference what
name you give, whether you call it Fenton or Conkling or Cornell or
Arthur or Platt or by the names of men now living. The ruler of the
state during the greater part of the forty years of my acquaintance with
the state government has not been any man authorized by the constitution
or by law.... The par