ABSTRACT
The American politician, while constituting a separate class in American society, has not a distinct origin. He is recruited from all ranks of the community, as circumstances and personal tastes happen to dictate, by a process of natural selection. The Machine is now built, the politicians are sorted and in their proper places for action. The A B C of the strategy of the Machine is to shuffle the electoral pack, to mix up its own cause with that of the party whose flag it hoists or with the great political preoccupations of the day, and to create a confusion between the different elections themselves. The Machine includes men whose political morality provokes strong animadversion; it may be so; it has governed the city or the State like a satrapy. There is, perhaps, an element of truth in this charge; but is it fair to make the party pay for the individual faults of a few of its servants.
