Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 5.djvu/115

Rh zeal, a candidate of whom they can expect no service, but only because they would otherwise forfeit their party standing and lose future opportunities. This is the machine. Whether it operates only in municipalities or spreads its power over whole States, its spirit is the same. Nor is that spirit very different when the officeholding force of the National Government is called into political service to promote personal ends. On the whole, it may be said that the development of party organization has of late years been largely in the direction of machine methods.

What will be the effect of all this on our political life? Money wrongfully used in elections corrupts public opinion; the machine, as far as its influence reaches, strives by the action of selfish, well-drilled and disciplined organization to obstruct, override, falsify, enslave public opinion. Thus both tend to poison the very fountainhead of democratic government. They do more. They serve to raise up systematically a race of unprincipled, self-seeking, mercenary politicians, and to repel from public life men who with patriotic ambition wish to serve the public welfare according to their honest convictions. Wherever money and the machine are strong and successful, they teach the youth of the country that not ability, knowledge, honesty, public spirit, fidelity to duty, devotion to the country will keep them in public position, but that subserviency to a self-seeking organization, the willingness to sacrifice to it all higher aims, is necessary to political success; that the low arts of the political manipulator are worth more to the public man than true statesmanship; that those who are constantly troubled by principle and a high sense of duty are impracticable visionaries and dudes and Pharisees; that such fools may seem to get a start occasionally, but not for long; that he who wishes to prosper in politics must discard such