r them. I made
up my mind that the only way I could beat the bosses whenever the need
to do so arose (and unless there was such need I did not wish to try)
was, not by attempting to manipulate the machinery, and not by trusting
merely to the professional reformers, but by making my appeal as
directly and as emphatically as I knew how to the mass of voters
themselves, to the people, to the men who if waked up would be able to
impose their will on their representatives. My success depended upon
getting the people in the different districts to look at matters in my
way, and getting them to take such an active interest in affairs as to
enable them to exercise control over their representatives.

There were a few of the Senators and Assemblymen whom I could reach by
seeing them personally and putting before them my arguments; but most of
them were too much under the control of the machine for me to shake
them loose unless they knew that the people were actively behind me. In
making my appeal to the people as a whole I was dealing with an entirely
different constituency from that which, especially in the big cities,
liked to think of itself as the "better element," the particular
exponent of reform and good citizenship. I was dealing with shrewd,
hard-headed, kindly men and women, chiefly concerned with the absorbing
work of earning their own living, and impatient of fads, who had grown
to feel that the associations with the word "reformer" were not much
better than the associations with the word "politician." I had to
convince these men and women of my good faith, and, moreover, of my
common sense and efficiency. They were most of them strong partisans,
and an outrage had to be very real and very great to shake them even
partially loose from their party affiliations. Moreover, they took
little interest in any fight of mere personalities. They were not
influenced in the least by the silk-stocking reform view of Mr. Platt.
I knew that if they were persuaded that I was engaged in a mere faction
fight against him, that it was a mere issue between his ambition and
mine, they would at once become indifferent, and my fight would be lost.

But I felt that I could count on their support wherever I could show
them that the fight was not made just for the sake of the row, that it
was not made merely as a factional contest against Senator Platt and the
organization, but was waged from a sense of duty for real and tangible
causes such a