There has been a disposition to treat the “Boss” chiefly as the political creature of the corrupt corporation; and it is undoubtedly true that one of the most important functions of the municipal and state “Bosses” has been that of conducting negotiations with the corporations.  But to consider the specialized organization of our local politics as the direct result of specialized organization of American business is wholly to misunderstand its significance.  The two processes are the parallel effects of the same conditions and ideas working in different fields.  Business efficiency under the conditions prevailing in our political and economic fabric demanded the “Captain of Industry.”  Political efficiency under our system of local government demanded the “Boss.”  The latter is an independent power who has his own special reasons for existence.  He put in an embryonic appearance long before the large corporations had obtained anything like their existing power in American politics; and he will survive in some form their reduction to political insignificance.  He has been a genuine and within limits a useful product of the American democracy; and it would be fatal either to undervalue or to misunderstand him.

The American system of local self-government encouraged the creation of the political “Boss,” because it required such an enormous amount of political business.  Some one was needed to transact this business, and the professional politician was developed to supply the need.  There was no reason why such a need should have existed; because the amount of political business incident to state government could have been very much economized by a simpler method of organization.  But American democratic ideas during the years when the state governments took form were wholly opposed to simplicity of organization.  The state constitutions adopted during the period of Jacksonian supremacy seem designed to make local government costly in time and energy and irresponsible in action; and they provided the legal scenery in the midst of which the professional politician became the only effective hero.

The state constitutions were all very much influenced by the Federal instrument, but in the copies many attempts were made to improve upon the model.  The Democracy had come to believe that the Federal Constitution tended to encourage independence and even special efficiency on the part of Federal officials; and it proposed to correct such an erroneous tendency in the more thoroughly democratic state governments.  No attempt was, indeed, made to deprive the executive and the judicial officials of independence by making them the creatures of the legislative branch; for such a change, although conforming to earlier democratic ideas, would have looked in the direction of a concentration of responsibility.  The far more insidious course was adopted of keeping the executive, the judicial, and the legislative branches of the government technically