the
machine politicians were not giving them the kind of government which
they wished. As this waking up grew more general, not merely in New York
or any other one State, but throughout most of the Nation, the power
of the bosses waned. Then a curious thing happened. The professional
reformers who had most loudly criticized these bosses began to change
toward them. Newspaper editors, college presidents, corporation lawyers,
and big business men, all alike, had denounced the bosses and had taken
part in reform movements against them so long as these reforms dealt
only with things that were superficial, or with fundamental things that
did not affect themselves and their associates. But the majority
of these men turned to the support of the bosses when the great new
movement began clearly to make itself evident as one against privilege
in business no less than against privilege in politics, as one for
social and industrial no less than for political righteousness and fair
dealing. The big corporation lawyer who had antagonized the boss in
matters which he regarded as purely political stood shoulder to shoulder
with the boss when the movement for betterment took shape in direct
attack on the combination of business with politics and with the
judiciary which has done so much to enthrone privilege in the economic
world.

The reformers who denounced political corruption and fraud when shown
at the expense of their own candidates by machine ward heelers of a low
type hysterically applauded similar corrupt trickery when practiced by
these same politicians against men with whose political and industrial
programme the reformers were not in sympathy. I had always been
instinctively and by nature a democrat, but if I had needed conversion
to the democratic ideal here in America the stimulus would have been
supplied by what I saw of the attitude, not merely of the bulk of the
men of greatest wealth, but of the bulk of the men who most prided
themselves upon their education and culture, when we began in good faith
to grapple with the wrong and injustice of our social and industrial
system, and to hit at the men responsible for the wrong, no matter how
high they stood in business or in politics, at the bar or on the bench.
It was while I was Governor, and especially in connection with the
franchise tax legislation, that I first became thoroughly aware of the
real causes of this attitude among the men of great wealth and among the
men