had machines and bosses which
lent their hand to, and furnished a complacent instrument for,
corporations. Time was when they ordered delegates in a convention with
the same degree of certainty that the order would be supplied, as they
did steel rails or any other commodity. That time has passed and why?
Because the danger of plutocracy forced itself on the people. Leaders
took it up and showed it to them; and in the last ten years we have had
a great movement to eliminate corporate and money control in politics.
Great statutes have been passed--the anti-trust law, the interstate
commerce law, the statutes against the use of contributions from
corporations in politics, the statutes requiring the showing of the
electoral expenses, have all been brought about in response to a popular
demand.

The people failed to scrutinize before, but now that they are aroused
and have taken matters in their own hands, they have brought about
reform. The fact that he is supported by bosses is now generally enough
to defeat a man, and the charge that he has a machine with him is enough
to interfere with his electoral success. Organization is necessary for
political success; even reformers find that out after they get into
politics, but today there is an unreasonable prejudice against it. The
great and good effect of the reform, however, is that corporations are
no longer in politics. Of course corruption is not all gone, but it is
largely stayed, and there is no longer any chance that corporations can
control as they did.

But the leviathan of the people cannot be aroused in this way and his
movement stopped at the median line. We must expect unwise excess.
Sincere reformers have reasoned that because we had the representative
form of government during this corrupt period, it is the representative
form of government which is responsible. Because we had courts during
the corrupt period, the courts are responsible for the corruption.
Therefore we must change the representative system by injecting more
democracy into it and we must change the courts by injecting more
democracy into them and require the people at an election to decide
cases instead of judges on the Bench. These are the excesses to which we
trend.

We are a pretty great people. We admit it. We have great confidence in
what we can do, and when we are set, neither an economic law drawn from
political science nor experience seems a very formidable objection. We
are a successf