rse from open efforts to accommodate law to the material
development which has so strengthened the country in all that it has
undertaken by supplying its extraordinary life with its necessary physical
foundations.

But the illegitimate connections between business and legislation are
another matter. I would wish to speak on this subject with soberness and
circumspection. I have no desire to excite anger against anybody. That
would be easy, but it would do no particular good. I wish, rather, to
consider an unhappy situation in a spirit that may enable us to account
for it, to some extent, and so perhaps get at the causes and the remedy.
Mere denunciation doesn't help much to clear up a matter so involved as is
the complicity of business with evil politics in America.

Every community is vaguely aware that the political machine upon which it
looks askance has certain very definite connections with men who are
engaged in business on a large scale, and the suspicion which attaches to
the machine itself has begun to attach also to business enterprises, just
because these connections are known to exist. If these connections were
open and avowed, if everybody knew just what they involved and just what
use was being made of them, there would be no difficulty in keeping an eye
upon affairs and in controlling them by public opinion. But,
unfortunately, the whole process of law-making in America is a very
obscure one. There is no highway of legislation, but there are many
by-ways. Parties are not organized in such a way in our legislatures as to
make any one group of men avowedly responsible for the course of
legislation. The whole process of discussion, if any discussion at all
takes place, is private and shut away from public scrutiny and knowledge.
There are so many circles within circles, there are so many indirect and
private ways of getting at legislative action, that our communities are
constantly uneasy during legislative sessions. It is this confusion and
obscurity and privacy of our legislative method that gives the political
machine its opportunity. There is no publicly responsible man or group of
men who are known to formulate legislation and to take charge of it from
the time of its introduction until the time of its enactment. It has,
therefore, been possible for an outside force,--the political machine, the
body of men who nominated the legislators and who conducted the contest
for their election,--to assume the rol