een either
corrupting public officials or availing themselves of the benefits of
corrupt politics, many of them, not in New York alone, but in every
American city, have been, at the same time, metamorphosing themselves
into reformers. Not reformers, of course, in the true, high sense of the
word, but as ingenious counterfeits. With the most ardent professions of
civic purity and of horror at the prevailing corruption they have come
forward on occasions, clothed in a fine and pompous garb of
righteousness.

THE QUALITY OF "REFORMERS."

The very men who cheated cities, states and nation out of enormous sums
in taxation; who bribed, through their retainers, legislatures, common
councils and executive and administrative officials; who corruptly put
judges on the bench; who made Government simply an auxiliary to their
designs; who exacted heavy tribute from the people in a thousand ways;
who forced their employees to work for precarious wages and who bitterly
fought every movement for the betterment of the working classes--these
were the men who have made up these so-called "reform" committees,
precisely as to-day they constitute them.[160]

If there had been the slightest serious attempt to interfere with their
vested privileges, corruptly obtained and corruptly enhanced, and with
the vast amount of increment and graft that these privileges bought
them, they would have instantly raised the cry of revolutionary
confiscation. But they were very willing to put an end to the petty
graft which the politicians collected from saloons, brothels, peddlers,
and the small merchants, and thereby present themselves as respectable
and public-spirited citizens, appalled at the existing corruption. The
newspapers supported them in this attitude, and occasionally a
sufficient number of the voters would sustain their appeals and elect
candidates that they presented. The only real difference was that under
an openly corrupt machine they had to pay in bribes for franchises, laws
and immunity from laws, while under the "reform" administrations, which
represented, and toadied to, them, they often obtained all these and
more without the expenditure of a cent. It has often been much more
economical for them to have "reform" in power; and it is a well known
truism that the business-class reform administrations which are
popularly assumed to be honest, will go to greater lengths in selling
out the rights of the people than the most corrupt poli