Machine Politics 123 



to applying the eighth commandment to affairs of 

 state. I have more than once heard the statement, 

 "He is very liberal to the poor," advanced as a 

 perfectly satisfactory answer to the charge that a 

 certain public man was corrupt. Moreover, work- 

 ing men, whose lives are passed in one unceasing 

 round of narrow and monotonous toil, are not un- 

 naturally inclined to pay heed to the demagogues 

 and professional labor advocates who promise if 

 elected to try to pass laws to better their condition; 

 they are hardly prepared to understand or approve 

 the American doctrine of government, which is 

 that the State can not ordinarily attempt to better 

 the condition of a man or a set of men, but can 

 merely see that no wrong is done him or them by 

 any one else, and that all alike have a fair chance 

 in the struggle for life a struggle wherein it 

 may as well at once be freely though sadly acknowl- 

 edged, very many are bound to fall, no matter how 

 ideally perfect any given system of government 

 may be. 



Of course it must be remembered that all these 

 general statements are subject to an immense num- 

 ber of individual exceptions ; there are tens of thou- 

 sands of men who work with their hands for their 

 daily bread and yet put into actual practice that sub- 

 lime virtue of disinterested adherence to the right, 

 even when it seems likely merely to benefit others, 

 and those others better off than they themselves 

 are; for they vote for honesty and cleanliness, in 

 spite of great temptation to do the opposite, and in 



