ABSTRACT
Terror runs through the ranks of the politicians; the most powerful of them, the head bosses, on whose smile State Governors and legislators were hanging only the day before, bite the dust. The power of public opinion, which is supposed to weigh heavily, in the United States, on everybody and everything, reaches the politicians in the end, but it reaches them in a more or less accidental way, which excludes all regular responsibility. The authority which public opinion wields over the Machine is the authority of Judge Lynch. The most extensive limitations to which the power of the Machine and of the politicians is subject are to be found in the social and economic character of the particular community. Machine has no stable and regular existence; rings of mercenary politicians form in them, disappear after short time, and re-form under favourable circumstances. The interested philanthropy and the other attentions lavished by the politicians win them the hearts of the people.
