re
already in fairly close alliance with the privileged interests, now
found everything working to their advantage. Good and high-minded men
of conservative temperament in their panic played into the hands of the
ultra-reactionaries of business and politics. The alliance between the
two kinds of privilege, political and financial, was closely cemented;
and wherever there was any attempt to break it up, the cry was at once
raised that this merely represented another phase of the assault on
National honesty and individual and mercantile integrity. As so often
happens, the excesses and threats of an unwise and extreme radicalism
had resulted in immensely strengthening the position of the
beneficiaries of reaction. This was the era when the Standard Oil
Company achieved a mastery of Pennsylvania politics so far-reaching
and so corrupt that it is difficult to describe it without seeming to
exaggerate.

In New York State, United States Senator Platt was the absolute boss of
the Republican party. "Big business" was back of him; yet at the time
this, the most important element in his strength, was only imperfectly
understood. It was not until I was elected Governor that I myself came
to understand it. We were still accustomed to talking of the "machine"
as if it were something merely political, with which business had
nothing to do. Senator Platt did not use his political position to
advance his private fortunes--therein differing absolutely from many
other political bosses. He lived in hotels and had few extravagant
tastes. Indeed, I could not find that he had any tastes at all except
for politics, and on rare occasions for a very dry theology wholly
divorced from moral implications. But big business men contributed
to him large sums of money, which enabled him to keep his grip on
the machine and secured for them the help of the machine if they were
threatened with adverse legislation. The contributions were given in the
guise of contributions for campaign purposes, of money for the good
of the party; when the money was contributed there was rarely talk of
specific favors in return.[*] It was simply put into Mr. Platt's hands
and treated by him as in the campaign chest. Then he distributed it
in the districts where it was most needed by the candidates and
organization leaders. Ordinarily no pledge was required from the latter
to the bosses, any more than it was required by the business men
from Mr. Platt or his lieutenants. N