(1) By one means or other, unscrupulous rulers and officeholders have always been able to replenish their private income by misuse of their official powers.  Since popular government was first tried there has existed a class of professional politicians with little regard for the public welfare and ready to do anything to keep themselves in power and fatten their pocketbooks.  We have in America the well-known phenomena of the “machine,” the “ring,” and the “boss,” whose motto is “Politics is politics,” and who are unashamed to put their interests above those of the people at large.  Their control of the machinery of government enables them, unless ingenious provisions prevent, to wink at illegal voting and fraudulent counting of votes, to get the dregs of the population out to the polls, and perhaps intimidate their opponents from voting.  The police power has often been misused for such purposes; the gerrymander is another clever method of manipulating the results of elections.  Such means, together with the use as bribe money of funds deflected from the public treasury, the blackmail of vice, and the acceptance of “contributions” from favored parties, create a vicious circle which tends to keep in power corrupt officials who have once got hold.

(2) But the power of unscrupulous politicians is made far greater by the support of those whose personal interests they make a business of furthering.  Whole sections of the people are pleased and placated and bribed by special legislation in their favor, and as many individuals as possible are given positions.  Behind every “boss” there are always hundreds of men who owe their “jobs” to him, and many others who cherish promises and hopes for personal favors.  Jane Addams tells us that upon one occasion when the reformers in Chicago tried to oust a corrupt alderman they “soon discovered that approximately one out of every five voters in the nineteenth ward at that time held a job dependent upon the good will of the alderman.” [Footnote:  Twenty Years at Hull House, p. 316.]

(3) Of especial importance are the great “interests” that are always to be found behind a corrupt administration.  These corporations are so dependent upon the good will of the Government for their prosperity, and even for their very existence, that from the primitive instinct of self-preservation as well as from the greed of exorbitant profits, they stand ready to give liberal bribes, or at least to back with money and moral support the party machine that promises to favor them.  They control a large proportion of the newspapers and magazines, and are thus able to distort facts, protect themselves from attack, and even stir up a factitious distrust of would-be reformers.  As every little contractor naturally favors the “ring” that awards contracts to him, so the great corporations publicly or secretly support it.  The liquor trade and the vice caterers-the keepers of gambling dens, illegal “shows,” and disorderly houses-back by