ransmitted in secret, and by people who possessed full authority. An
agreement to secure certain franchises or certain needed legislation in
return for certain personal or party favors was not an agreement which
could be made between a board of directors and a group of district
leaders. If a large number of people were familiar with the details of
such negotiations, something more than a hint thereof would be sure to
leak out; and unquestionably the fact that a traffic of this kind was
part of the political game had much to do with the ability of the
municipal or state "Boss" to obtain and to keep his power. The profits
not only enabled him to increase party funds and to line his own
pockets, but it also furnished him with a useful and abundant source of
patronage. He could get positions for the political henchmen of his
district leaders, not only with the local and state governments, but
with the corporations. Thus every "Boss," even those whose influence did
not extend beyond an election district, was more or less completely
identified with the corporations who occupied within his bailiwick any
important relation to the state.

This alliance between the political machines and the big
corporations--particularly those who operate railroads or control
municipal franchises--was an alliance between two independent and
cooerdinate powers in the kingdom of American practical affairs. The
political "Boss" did not create the industrial leader for his own good
purposes. Neither did the industrial leader create the machine and its
"Boss," although he has done much to confirm the latter's influence.
Each of them saw an opportunity to turn to his own account the
individualistic "freedom" of American politics and industry. Each of
them was enabled by the character of our political traditions to obtain
an amount of power which the originators of those political ideas never
anticipated, and which, if not illegal, was entirely outside the law.
It so happened that the kind of power which each obtained was very
useful to the other. A corporation which derived its profits from public
franchises, or from a business transacted in many different states,
found the purchase of a local or state machine well within its means and
well according to its interests. The professional politicians who had
embarked in politics as a business and who were making what they could
out of it for themselves and their followers, could not resist this
unexpected