“Yes.  I like Mr. Moriarty, and can understand why others do.  He is so ugly, and so honest, and so jolly.  He’s lovely.”

“Then we get another grade.  Usually men of a good deal of brain force, though not of necessity well educated.  They influence all below them by being better informed, and by being more far-seeing.  Such men as Gallagher and Dummer.  They, too, are usually in politics for a living, and so can take the trouble to work for ends for which the men with other work have no time.  They don’t need the great personal popularity of those I have just mentioned, but they need far more skill and brain.  Now you can see, that these last, in order to carry out their intentions, must meet and try to arrange to pull together, for otherwise they can do nothing.  Naturally, in a dozen or twenty men, there will be grades, and very often a single man will be able to dominate them all, just as the smaller bosses dominate the smaller men.  And this man the papers call a boss of a ward.  Then when these various ward bosses endeavor to unite for general purposes, the strongest man will sway them, and he is boss of the city.”

“And that is what you are?”

“Yes.  By that I mean that nothing is attempted in the ward or city without consultation with me.  But of course I am more dependent on the voters than they are on me, for if they choose to do differently from what I advise, they have the power, while I am helpless.”

“You mean the smaller bosses?”

“Not so much them as the actual voters.  A few times I have shot right over the heads of the bosses and appealed directly to the voters.”

“Then you can make them do what you want?”

“Within limits, yes.  As I told you, I am absolutely dependent on the voters.  If they should defeat what I want three times running, every one would laugh at me, and my power would be gone.  So you see that a boss is only a boss so long as he can influence votes.”

“But they haven’t defeated you?”

“No, not yet.”

“But if the voters took their opinions from the other bosses how did you do anything?”

“There comes in the problem of practical politics.  The question of who can affect the voters most.  Take my own ward.  Suppose that I want something done so much that I insist.  And suppose that some of the other leaders are equally determined that it shan’t be done.  The ward splits on the question and each faction tries to gain control in the primary.  When I have had to interfere, I go right down among the voters and tell them why and what I want to do.  Then the men I have had to antagonize do the same, and the voters decide between us.  It then is a question as to which side can win the majority of the voters.  Because I have been very successful in this, I am the so-called boss.  That is, I can make the voters feel that I am right.”

“How?”