he whole story. The unscrupulous energy of the "Boss"
or the "tainted" millionaire is vitally related to the moral
indifference of the "plain people." Both of them have been encouraged to
believe by the nature of our traditional ideas and institutions that a
man could be patriotic without being either public-spirited or
disinterested. The democratic state has been conceived as a piece of
political machinery, which existed for the purpose of securing certain
individual rights and opportunities--the expectation being that the
greatest individual happiness would be thereby promoted, and one which
harmonized with the public interest. Consequently when the "Boss" and
the "tainted" millionaire took advantage of this situation to secure for
themselves an unusually large amount of political and economic power,
they were putting into practice an idea which traditionally had been
entirely respectable, and which during the pioneer period had not worked
badly. On the other hand, when, the mass of American voters failed to
detect the danger of such usurpation until it had gone altogether too
far, they, too, were not without warrant for their lethargy and
callousness. They, too, in a smaller way had considered the American
political and economic system chiefly as a system framed for their
individual benefit, and it did not seem sportsmanlike to turn and rend
their more successful competitors, until they were told that the
"trusts" and the "Bosses" were violating the sacred principle of equal
rights. Thus the abuses of which we are complaining are not weeds which
have been allowed to spring up from neglect, and which can be eradicated
by a man with a hoe. They are cultivated plants, which, if not
precisely specified in the plan of the American political and economic
garden, have at least been encouraged by traditional methods of
cultivation.

The fact that this dangerous usurpation of power has been accomplished
partly by illegal methods has blinded many reformers to two
considerations, which have a vital relation to both the theory and the
practice of reform. Violation of the law was itself partly the result of
conflicting and unwise state legislation, and for this reason did not
seem very heinous either to its perpetrators or to public opinion. But
even if the law had not been violated, similar results would have
followed. Under the traditional American system, with the freedom
permitted to the individual, with the restriction place