Page:Forty years of it (IA fortyyearsofit00whitiala).pdf/206



I have spoken of the Independents as though they were an authentic political party, when it was one of their basic principles to be no party at all. They were Republicans and Democrats who, in the revelation of Jones's death, had come to see that it was the partizan that was responsible for the evil political machines in American cities; they saw that by dividing themselves arbitrarily into parties, along national lines, by voting, almost automatically, their party tickets, ratifying nominations made for them they knew not how, they were but delivering over their city to the spoiler. As Republicans, proud of the traditions of that party, they had voted under the impression that they were voting for Lincoln; as Democrats they thought they were voting for Jefferson, or at least for Jackson, but they had discovered that they had been voting principally for the street railway company and the privileges allied with it in interest.

And more than all, they saw that in the amazing superstition of party regularity by which the partizan mind in that day was obsessed, they were voting for these interests no matter which ticket they supported, for the machine was not only partizan, it was bi-partizan, and the great conflict they waged at the polls was the most absurd sham battle that ever was fought. It seems almost incredible now that men's minds were ever so clouded, strange that they did not earlier discover how absurd was a sys