fact that a traffic of this kind was part of the political game had much to do with the ability of the municipal or state “Boss” to obtain and to keep his power.  The profits not only enabled him to increase party funds and to line his own pockets, but it also furnished him with a useful and abundant source of patronage.  He could get positions for the political henchmen of his district leaders, not only with the local and state governments, but with the corporations.  Thus every “Boss,” even those whose influence did not extend beyond an election district, was more or less completely identified with the corporations who occupied within his bailiwick any important relation to the state.

This alliance between the political machines and the big corporations—­particularly those who operate railroads or control municipal franchises—­was an alliance between two independent and cooerdinate powers in the kingdom of American practical affairs.  The political “Boss” did not create the industrial leader for his own good purposes.  Neither did the industrial leader create the machine and its “Boss,” although he has done much to confirm the latter’s influence.  Each of them saw an opportunity to turn to his own account the individualistic “freedom” of American politics and industry.  Each of them was enabled by the character of our political traditions to obtain an amount of power which the originators of those political ideas never anticipated, and which, if not illegal, was entirely outside the law.  It so happened that the kind of power which each obtained was very useful to the other.  A corporation which derived its profits from public franchises, or from a business transacted in many different states, found the purchase of a local or state machine well within its means and well according to its interests.  The professional politicians who had embarked in politics as a business and who were making what they could out of it for themselves and their followers, could not resist this unexpected and lucrative addition to their market.  But it must be remembered that the alliance was founded on interest rather than association, on mutual agreement rather than on any effective subordination one to another.  A certain change in conditions might easily make their separate interests diverge, and abstract all the profits from their traffic.  If anything happened, for instance, to make inter-state railroad corporations less dependent on the state governments, they would no longer need the expense of subsidizing the state machines.  There are signs at the present time that these interests are diverging, and that such alliances will be less dangerous in the future than they have been in the past.  But even if the alliance is broken, the peculiar unofficial organization of American industry and politics will persist, and will constitute, both in its consequences and its significance, two of our most important national problems.