The case against Plutocracy gained an advance upon the Docket by the New York gubernatorial contest, but, unless I am much mistaken, two national figures came out of it with mud on their boots.
One of these is W. R. Hearst.
The other is W. J. Bryan.
When Max Ihmsen advised Mr. Hearst to come to terms with Murphy, the striped Tammany Boss, he disgusted thousands of sincere Hearstites, not only in New York but throughout the Union.
The deal was too bad.
It took Hearst out of the class of Reformers and put him into that of self-seeking Politicians.
It created in the minds of his disinterested friends the suspicion that he posed as a Reformer to serve the purpose of a personal ambition.
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Boss Murphy is a rich specimen of the Boss—the man who is in politics for Money, who cares nothing for Principle, who has no conception of Duty, who would not understand what you meant if you talked to him about Moral Obligation, who amasses wealth by screening from adverse legislation the rascals that rob the Public under corporate names, who makes it possible for invaluable public franchises to be stolen with impunity, and who renders it easy for the robbers that grabbed the property to use it to oppress and exploit the people from whom it was stolen.
I know that Murphy is the worst representative of that class of Bosses because the Hearst newspapers told me so.