122 Machine Politics 



ultimately upon them, and actually view with perfect 

 complacency burdens laid by their representatives 

 upon the tax-payers, and, if anything, approve of 

 a hostile attitude toward the latter having a vague 

 feeling of animosity toward them as possessing 

 more than their proper proportion of the world's 

 good things, and sharing with most other human 

 beings the capacity to bear with philosophic equa- 

 nimity ills merely affecting one's neighbors. When 

 powerfully roused on some financial, but still more 

 on some sentimental question, this same laboring 

 class will throw its enormous and usually decisive 

 weight into the scale which it believes inclines to 

 the right; but its members are often curiously and 

 cynically indifferent to charges of corruption against 

 favorite heroes or demagogues, so long as these 

 charges do not imply betrayal of their own real or 

 fancied interests. Thus an alderman or Assembly- 

 man representing certain wards may make as much 

 money as he pleases out of corporations without 

 seriously jeopardizing his standing with his con- 

 stituents; but if he once, whether from honest or 

 dishonest motives, stands by a corporation when the 

 interests of the latter are supposed to conflict with 

 those of "the people/' it is all up with him. These 

 voters are, moreover, very emotional; they value 

 in a public man what we are accustomed to consider 

 virtues only to be taken into account when estimat- 

 ing private character. Thus, if a man is open- 

 handed and warm-hearted, they consider it as a fair 

 offset to his being a little bit shaky when it comes 



