on in blackmailing and protecting
vice is of far-reaching damage to his constituents. But these
constituents are for the most part men and women who struggle hard
against poverty and with whom the problem of living is very real and
very close. They would prefer clean and honest government, if this
clean and honest government is accompanied by human sympathy, human
understanding. But an appeal made to them for virtue in the abstract, an
appeal made by good men who do not really understand their needs, will
often pass quite unheeded, if on the other side stands the boss, the
friend and benefactor, who may have been guilty of much wrong-doing in
things that they are hardly aware concern them, but who appeals to them,
not only for the sake of favors to come, but in the name of gratitude
and loyalty, and above all of understanding and fellow-feeling. They
have a feeling of clan-loyalty to him; his and their relations may be
substantially those which are right and proper among primitive people
still in the clan stage of moral development. The successful fight
against this type of vicious boss, and the type of vicious politics
which produces it, can be made only by men who have a genuine
fellow-feeling for and understanding of the people for and with whom
they are to work, and who in practical fashion seek their social and
industrial benefit.

There are communities of poor men, whose lives are hard, in which the
boss, though he would be out of place in a more advanced community, if
fundamentally an honest man, meets a real need which would otherwise not
be met. Because of his limitations in other than purely local matters
it may be our duty to fight such a boss; but it may also be our duty
to recognize, within his limitations, both his sincerity and his
usefulness.

Yet again even the boss who really is evil, like the business man who
really is evil, may on certain points be sound, and be doing good work.
It may be the highest duty of the patriotic public servant to work with
the big boss or the big business man on these points, while refusing
to work with him on others. In the same way there are many self-styled
reformers whose conduct is such as to warrant Tom Reed's bitter remark,
that when Dr. Johnson defined patriotism as the last refuge of a
scoundrel he was ignorant of the infinite possibilities contained in the
word reform. Yet, none the less, it is our duty to work for the
reforms these men champion, without regard