'cabinet' of political
lieutenants which met every Sunday night at his house. He had all his
appointees working for the City on the Hill. But when he went out
campaigning before the people he talked only of three-cent fares and the
tax outrages. Tom Johnson didn't show the people the City on the Hill. He
didn't take them into his confidence. They never really saw what it was
all about. And they went back on Tom Johnson."

That is one of Mr. Steffens's most acute observations. What makes it
doubly interesting is that Tom Johnson confirmed it a few months before
he died. His friends were telling him that his defeat was temporary, that
the work he had begun was unchecked. It was plain that in the midst of
his suffering, with death close by, he found great comfort in that
assurance. But his mind was so realistic, his integrity so great that he
could not blink the fact that there had been a defeat. Steffens was
pointing out the explanation: "you did not show the people what you saw,
you gave them the details, you fought their battles, you started to
build, but you left them in darkness as to the final goal."

I wish I could recall the exact words in which Tom Johnson replied. For
in them the greatest of the piecemeal reformers admitted the practical
weakness of opportunist politics.

There is a type of radical who has an idea that he can insinuate advanced
ideas into legislation without being caught. His plan of action is to
keep his real program well concealed and to dole out sections of it to
the public from time to time. John A. Hobson in "The Crisis of
Liberalism" describes the "practical reformer" so that anybody can
recognize him: "This revolt against ideas is carried so far that able men
have come seriously to look upon progress as a matter for the
manipulation of wire-pullers, something to be 'jobbed' in committee by
sophistical notions or other clever trickery." Lincoln Steffens calls
these people "our damned rascals." Mr. Hobson continues, "The attraction
of some obvious gain, the suppression of some scandalous abuse of
monopolist power by a private company, some needed enlargement of
existing Municipal or State enterprise by lateral expansion--such are the
sole springs of action." Well may Mr. Hobson inquire, _"Now, what
provision is made for generating the motor power of progress in
Collectivism?"_

No amount of architect's plans, bricks and mortar will build a house.
Someone must have the wish to build it. S