While it requires many wheels to work the machine, some are large, some small, but all are dangerous. Men becoming infatuated with politics, the desire to hold office leads them from paths of rectitude. They lose their hold on legitimate business, and grasping for the bubble fame, go headlong to destruction. One man may succeed in reaching the summit of his ambition, but it is by climbing over the ruins of the nine hundred and ninety-nine fallen on the highway.
The fight for spoils develops bad passions, creates schisms in parties. Faction fights in both political organizations are so full of bitterness and so empty of principle that they disgust the honest voters; yet the latter with their preponderant majority seem to be powerless to overthrow the politicians. One large wheel seems to have power to turn scores of little wheels in the great machine.
The dangers of the system have lately been exemplified in a tragedy that plunged the nation into sorrow; but while we mourn the death of a chief magistrate the politicians still continue to propel the machine. It is not to be supposed that all men engaged in political work or inspired by political ambition are bad men. On the contrary, there are thousands who are honest and honorable; politics is not only the privilege but the duty of every American citizen, and every inducement should be held out to the youth of the generations of to-day to go into politics with all the strength of their manhood. But the difficulty—as every intelligent man knows—is that caucuses and conventions and election work are left almost entirely to those who seek not patriotism but pelf; and the aim of this story is to show the natural tendency and actual results of the system as it exists to-day—to try and make it so plain that men may realize its vileness, and so to add another ounce to the weight of infamy that "the Machine" has to carry, hoping that the accumulation may at last beat it down. No partisan end is in view; it will puzzle the most expert politician to say which of the two great political parties in our land is aimed at—or rather, which is not aimed at. We all live in glass houses and cannot afford to throw stones at each other. On the other hand—to change the figure—it is sometimes wholesome to "see oursels as ithers see us"—or would see us if they could get a fair inside view. It's not a pretty picture; more's the pity. Let us try to better the original.
While the author has endeavored to briefly sketch the workings of the system, he leaves to others the task of correcting the evils resulting from "The Machine and its Wheels."
Transcriber's Note: Although most printer's errors have been retained, some have been silently corrected. Spelling and punctuation, capitalization, accents hyphens and formatting markup have been normalized and include the following:
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