634 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



It will also be remembered that Mr. Spencer's visit, owing to ill 

 health, had been a hurried one, and that he offered his views as the 

 result of his first impressions only. Bnt of the symptoms in our 

 public life which most impressed him as pointing toward the under- 

 mining of free institutions, he mentioned the tyranny of the political 

 machine, under which the citizen, as a rule, had to use his political 

 power according to the dictates of party managers, or else to throw 

 it away; and in this connection he reminded his interviewer of the 

 fact that " constitutions are not made, but grow," that the Americans 

 got their form of government more by a happy accident than by a 

 normal progress, and that here, as it has been elsewhere, it was be- 

 coming painfully evident that our political structure, as an arti- 

 ficially devised system, had been growing into something different 

 from that intended. Yet, in spite of all this, Mr. Spencer did not 

 seem to take a very doleful view of our future. From the size of our 

 country and the heterogeneity of its components he thought it safe 

 to predict that, as a nation, we would be long in evolving our ultimate 

 form; but that this ultimate form would be high, considering all 

 that we had accomplished and the troubles over which we had 

 already triumphed, he saw no reason to doubt; and thus he dismissed 

 his interviewer with the prophetic words quoted above. 



Scarcely sixteen years have passed since this interview took place, 

 but signs are not wanting to-day which show that during this brief 

 period we have gone from bad to worse, not only in regard to those 

 evils referred to, but to others of a like nature as well. From all 

 our principal cities come startling disclosures of boss rule and its 

 accompanying political corruption. Yet it is difficult to say which 

 is the most startling — the corruption itself, or the apathy toward it 

 evinced by the masses. In ISTew York city the disclosures a few years 

 ago were followed by a tidal wave of municipal reform, but after 

 receding this wave seems to have left the great city in a condition 

 little improved if any. The recent accounts from Pennsylvania fur- 

 nished us by Mr. Wanamaker, whatever effect they may have on the 

 elections in that State, are of far less interest to the average citizen 

 than the news from Washington, although the dangers implied in 

 the former threaten the most vital interests of the Commonwealth. 

 But, if, in places, the Commonwealths are groaning under political 

 corruption of the worst kind, the country as a whole is groaning 

 under an industrial depression, the causes of which do not seem in 

 any way to concern the professional politician, except perhaps when 

 political capital may be made from taking up the question. As to 

 these causes thoughtful men may differ. But upon this they all 

 must agree: that corporate capital during the last sixteen years 

 has become more and more tyrannical, while the wage-earners — 



