Page:Harvard Address on Civil Service Reform p54.jpg

 favor instead of standing upon his own merit is no longer in the true sense a freeman.

I mean to say further that, as we know from long experience, under the patronage or spoils system, many men rise to great political influence and power without distinguishing themselves by ability or character or public usefulness—men who simply know how to speculate upon other people's selfishness, who are only skillful in organizing a personal following among those who want to be fed at the public crib, and in building up a party machine mainly officered by placeholders and composed of men eager to become such; and who thus become commanders of bands of political mercenaries more or less ready to do whatever political work their leaders may impose upon them without much or any regard to the public interest.

I mean to say further that in this way party leadership is apt to degenerate, and in some cases has actually degenerated, from leadership of opinion into mere leadership of organization—that is, from a leadership the aim of which is to command to the popular mind certain principles and policies to the end of having them made effective by legislation and executive action, to a leadership which aims mainly, or even exclusively, at party victory and the winning of the spoil, caring for principles and policies not because of their true merits, but principally because of their use as vote-catching contrivances.

From these conditions has been evolved as a characteristic excrescence the party boss as we know him. The party boss in his highest development is the absolute dictator of the party organization within his city or his State, as the case may be. He controls the distribution, even in detail, of the patronage, the party spoil. He disposes of the party funds levied by assessments upon office holders, or upon corporations or other business interests that may be benefited or injured by party action. He awards the money for campaign expenses for candidates for office. He directs the subsidizing of the needy element of the party press. He rules, through his obedient henchmen, the party caucuses and conventions. He dictates the platforms to be adopted and the composition of the party committees. He selects the persons to be nominated as candidates for office—for Congress, for the Legislature, for