hey didn't send any carriage," said another regretfully. "I
don't see what's the use," said the third; "the roads are just as bad as
when we began talking about it." (We had been trying to mend them.) The
fourth yawned and said: "I don't care. I have my business to attend to."
And they took the train, which meant that they lost their votes. The
Tammany captain was busy hauling his voters by the cart-load to the
polling place. Over there stood a reform candidate who had been defeated
in the primary, and puffed out his chest. "The politicians are afraid of
me," he said. They slapped him on the back, as they went by, and told
him that he was a devil of a fellow.

So Tammany came back. And four long years we swore at it. But I am
afraid we swore at the wrong fellow. The real Tammany is not the
conscienceless rascal that plunders our treasury and fattens on our
substance. That one is a mere counterfeit. It is the voter who waits for
a carriage to take him to the polls; the man who "doesn't see what's the
use"; the business man who says "business is business," and has no time
to waste on voting; the citizen who "will wait to see how the cat jumps,
because he doesn't want to throw his vote away"; the cowardly American
who "doesn't want to antagonize" anybody; the fool who "washes his hands
of politics." These are the real Tammany, the men after the boss's own
heart. For every one whose vote he buys, there are two of these who give
him theirs for nothing. We shall get rid of him when these withdraw
their support, when they become citizens of the Patrick Mullen stamp, as
faithful at the polling place as he was at the forge; not before.

There is as much work for reform at the top as at the bottom. The man in
the slum votes according to his light, and the boss holds the candle.
But the boss is in no real sense a leader. He follows instead, always as
far behind the moral sentiment of the community as he thinks is safe. He
has heard it said that a community will not be any better than its
citizens, and that it will be just as good as they are, and he applies
the saying to himself. He is no worse a boss than the town deserves. I
can conceive of his taking credit to himself as some kind of a moral
instrument by which the virtue of the community may be graded, though
that is most unlikely. He does not bother himself with the morals of
anything. But right here is his Achilles heel. The man has no
conscience. He cannot tell the signs of