do what you want?"

"Within limits, yes. As I told you, I am absolutely dependent on the
voters. If they should defeat what I want three times running, every one
would laugh at me, and my power would be gone. So you see that a boss is
only a boss so long as he can influence votes."

"But they haven't defeated you?"

"No, not yet."

"But if the voters took their opinions from the other bosses how did you
do anything?"

"There comes in the problem of practical politics. The question of who
can affect the voters most. Take my own ward. Suppose that I want
something done so much that I insist. And suppose that some of the other
leaders are equally determined that it shan't be done. The ward splits
on the question and each faction tries to gain control in the primary.
When I have had to interfere, I go right down among the voters and tell
them why and what I want to do. Then the men I have had to antagonize do
the same, and the voters decide between us. It then is a question as to
which side can win the majority of the voters. Because I have been very
successful in this, I am the so-called boss. That is, I can make the
voters feel that I am right."

"How?"

"For many reasons. First, I have always tried to tell the voters the
truth, and never have been afraid to acknowledge I was wrong, when I
found I had made a mistake, so people trust what I say. Then, unlike
most of the leaders in politics, I am not trying to get myself office or
profit, and so the men feel that I am disinterested. Then I try to be
friendly with the whole ward, so that if I have to do what they don't
like, their personal feeling for me will do what my arguments never
could. With these simple, strong-feeling, and unreasoning folk, one can
get ten times the influence by a warm handshake and word that one can by
a logical argument. We are so used to believing what we read, if it
seems reasonable, that it is hard for us to understand that men who
spell out editorials with difficulty, and who have not been trained to
reason from facts, are not swayed by what to us seems an obvious
argument. But, on the contrary, if a man they trust, puts it in plain
language to them, they see it at once. I might write a careful
editorial, and ask my ward to read it, and unless they knew I wrote it,
they probably wouldn't be convinced in the least. But let me go into the
saloons, and tell the men just the same thing, and there isn't a man who
wouldn't be influenced by i