POLITICS AS A FORM OF CIVIL WAR. 595 



Politics tends to bring to the front the same kind of men that 

 other social disorders do. A study of political leaders in the demo- 

 cratic societies of the world discloses portraits that differ only in 

 degree from those that hang in the galleries of history in Italy in 

 the fifteenth century, in Germany during the Thirty Years' War, 

 and in France at the height of the French Revolution. Although 

 the men they represent may not be as barbarous as Galeazzo or Wal- 

 lenstein or Robespierre, they are just as unscrupulous and despi- 

 cable. Like their prototypes, some of them are of high birth; others 

 are of humble origin; still others belong to the criminal class. They 

 do not, of course, capture cities and towns and hold them for ran- 

 som, or threaten to burn fields of wheat and corn unless bribed to 

 desist; still they practice methods of spoliation not less efficient. By 

 blackmailing corporations and wealthy individuals, they obtain sums 

 of money that would have filled with bitter envy the leaders of the 

 famous or rather infamous " companies of adventurers." With the 

 booty thus obtained they gather about them numerous and powerful 

 bands of followers. In every district where their supremacy is 

 acknowledged they have their lieutenants and sublieutenants that 

 obey as implicitly as the subordinates in an army. Thus equipped 

 like any of the great brigands of history, they carry caucuses ana 

 conventions, shape the party policy, and control the legislation pro- 

 posed and enacted. 



To be sure, the economic devastation of politics is not as conspicu- 

 ous as that of war. It does not take the tragic form of burning 

 houses, trampled fields of grain, tumbling walls of cities, and vast 

 unproductive consumption by great bodies of armed men. Yet it 

 is none the less real. Not infrequently it is hardly less extensive 

 when measured in dollars and cents. Seldom does an election occur, 

 certainly not a heated congressional or presidential election, that the 

 complaint of serious interference with business is not universal. So 

 great has the evil become that, long before the meeting of the national 

 conventions in 1896, a concerted movement on the part of the in- 

 dustrial interests of the country was started to secure an abbreviation 

 of the period given up to political turmoil. Even more serious is 

 the economic disturbance due to legislatures. As no one knows what 

 stupendous piece of folly they may commit at any moment, there is 

 constant apprehension. " The country," said the Philadelphia 

 Ledger, a year ago, referring to the disturbance provoked by the 

 Teller repudiation resolution in the Senate and the violent Cuban 

 debate in the House, " has got Congress on its hands, and, after their 

 respective fashions, Senate and House are putting enormous weight 

 of disturbing doubts and fears upon it. ... To a greater or less de- 

 gree a meeting of Congress has been during recent years anticipated 



