“But the single purpose that animates the average politician is the same that inspires the beggar or the thief. Either he has failed for want of ability of an honest kind in legitimate methods of business and in competition with his fellows, and seeks a public salary with freedom to indulge his natural indolence, or he uses his ingenuity and abilities to secure the irresponsible power to plunder the public with impunity.” (Democracy, p. 270.)
The purchase of votes and the collection of funds for that purpose has always been an important part of the politician’s work. The expression “bunches of five” has become a byword ever since its use some twenty years ago by a prominent Republican politician in reference to delivery of votes for money. “Frying out the fat” is another striking expression which became current about the same time in the same way and was intended to be descriptive of the method of getting large sums from corporations for use in election purposes. The total amounts thus contributed in the past forty years to carry presidential elections would probably run into the hundreds of millions. In 1910 President Vreeland of the Metropolitan Street Railway of New York testified before a legislative committee that his company contributed campaign funds to both parties. One year it divided about $40,000 between them. This is not mentioned as an exceptional instance but as illustrative of a well known practice.
Let us now glance at the great man himself, the real Boss, the magnate, the prince of American Democracy, the man who of all men most thoroughly believes in manhood suffrage, understands it and profits by it; one of the real political rulers of the American people; he who makes and unmakes governors, senators and high judges; he for whom sheriffs, aldermen, assemblymen, state senators, and sometimes even our mayors of cities are glad to run errands and to wait in anterooms. Writing in 1914 Goodnow says of the bosses: “They control the making of laws and their execution after they are made.” (Politics and Administration, p. 169.) What is a boss like? What are his outward manifestations?
About the best analysis of his character and functions was made by Professor Reinsch of Wisconsin, as follows:
“Sooner or later there is evolved the boss, the fruit and flower of commercial politics in America. He represents the main interest but also holds the balance between the minor tributary groups. The secrecy necessary for his work gives him great power. He alone holds all the threads that bind the system together. In his person are united the confidence of the favored interests and the hopes of his political lieutenants. He commands the source of supplies. He has mastered the study of political psychology and knows by intimate experience the personal character of the prominent politicians in the state. Most of them are dependent upon him for future favors or are bound to him through past indiscretions. The character of the system demands an absolute ruler. For this reason, too, the power of the boss is continuous; it is rarely overthrown from within and only a great public upheaval can affect it. Bosses maintain themselves in the saddle and enjoy a long lease of power, because of their direct and confidential relations with the controlling interests; their inborn secretiveness leads them to keep their own counsel, and not to allow any other person a complete insight into all the intricacies of the system. They grow stronger as the years pass and no indiscretion or even crime is able to shake their authority while they keep in their hands the main threads connecting influence with its obedient tools. The abler men of this type are filled with a keen sense of the irony of their position. They have the clear insight into the coarser actualities of politics that characterized Machiavelli. The political exhorter who sways the multitudes from the stump does not become a boss; to achieve that position the power of cool analysis, of impassive control, and of unflinching execution, are more essential than any gifts of popular leadership.” (American Legislatures and Legislative Methods, pp. 236, 237.)
Another sketch:
“It must not be supposed that the members of Rings, or the great Boss himself are wicked men. They are the offspring of a system. Their morality is that of their surroundings. They see a door open to wealth and power, and they walk in. The obligations of patriotism or duty to the public are not disregarded by them, for these obligations have never been present to their minds. A State boss is usually a native American and a person of some education, who avoids the grosser forms of corruption, though he has to wink at them when practised by his friends. He may be a man of personal integrity. A city boss is often of foreign birth and humble origin; he has grown up in an atmosphere of oaths and cocktails; ideas of honour and purity are as strange to him as ideas about the nature of the currency and the incidence of taxation; politics is merely a means for getting and distributing places.” (Bryce, American Commonwealth, Vol. II, p. 110.)
Under the supervision of the political boss blackmail is levied for party purposes from gambling houses, saloons and houses of ill repute. He is not primarily concerned with political opinions. He controls his best men by their interests. It is his business to carry the elections and thus get power and places for self and followers. He is able to dismiss almost any politician from office and to close his political career. He and not the people is the real master of the inferior office-holders. “At all hazards he must prevent the incoming of an honest administration that will apply the public offices for public uses.” For this purpose the bosses of opposite parties unite when necessary. Woodburn mentions an instance of this in Philadelphia in 1901, and adds referring to the boss:
“Those who support him have their reward—the laborer gets his job, the placeman office; the policeman his promotion or his “divvy”; the contractor a chance at the public works; the banker the use of the public money; the gambler and the criminal immunity from prosecution; the honest merchant certain sidewalk privileges; the rich corporations lowered assessments and immunity from equitable taxation. All buy these special favors by support of the Boss’s power and policy, and all enjoy the blessings of the Boss’s government, high taxation, maladministration, stolen franchises, robbery of the public treasury, and criminal disorder in the community.” (Political Parties and Party Platforms, p. 364.)
In an article in the Outlook, April 2, 1898, Miss Jane Addams of Chicago, a well-known settlement worker, writing no doubt from personal observation, describes the Boss as an institution of American politics in similar language to that of Professor Woodburn. She depicts the typical city political boss, his personality and good-natured freebooting methods with piquancy and vigor; he is, she says, a successful boodler who is popular with the poor because in their ignorance they suppose that he only robs the rich while to the poor he is a sympathetic friend; or as they say, he has a good heart. The reader can easily trace for himself the direct connection between this point of view of the lower classes and their support of Tweed, the robber politician whom a New York City district triumphantly elected state senator shortly after his rascalities were exposed. With that connection in mind the relation between the power of the boss and universal suffrage is perfectly apparent. The class of voters brought in by unqualified suffrage prefer friendly bosses and free-handed boodlers to men who are governed by motives so superior to their own as to seem to them visionary or fantastic; who have in their pockets no stolen or easy got cash to squander on their followers, and who not being professional “handshakers” seem to the masses lacking in sympathy for common men.