Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 6.djvu/407

Rh tions should as such be true representatives of the principles and opinions cherished by their members, and not mere machines composed in the main of mercenaries, and commanded by bosses for such purposes as they may entertain. The development of the party organization into the machine and of the party leader into the boss has become one of the most dangerous evils threatening the working of our free institutions of government. Just here lies one of the most portentous problems of our political life—a problem from the solution of which it may depend whether this is to remain a democracy of real freemen governing themselves according to their intelligence and moral sense, or a mere battlefield for the contests of various unprincipled and rapacious party despotisms fighting for spoil. Every clear-sighted man knows this, and, no doubt, Mr. Roosevelt does.

To attack this machine-and-boss system in official position requires moral courage. Such courage an ordinary politician in the Presidency may not be expected to possess. But Mr. Roosevelt cannot object if he is judged by the standards he has set up for himself. When a champion enters the lists with so proud a flourish of trumpets about his courage and “militant honesty,” it may well be hoped that he will boldly, and at some risk, undertake the task of using the best of his power to stem the growth of an evil which, unless checked, will become fatal to the very life of our democratic government.

Now, what do we see? It is not the slightest exaggeration to say that in boss-and-machine-ridden States the boss-and-machine system flourishes to-day as if Theodore Roosevelt had never been governor of New York or President of the United States. In New York, by a sort of palace revolution, a new boss has displaced the old one, and it is still a question whether the new boss is not the worse of the two. In Pennsylvania, the old