The Republican bosses, who were already very powerful, and who were already in fairly close alliance with the privileged interests, now found everything working to their advantage. Good and high-minded men of conservative temperament in their panic played into the hands of the ultra-reactionaries of business and politics. The alliance between the two kinds of privilege, political and financial, was closely cemented; and wherever there was any attempt to break it up, the cry was at once raised that this merely represented another phase of the assault on National honesty and individual and mercantile integrity. As so often happens, the excesses and threats of an unwise and extreme radicalism had resulted in immensely strengthening the position of the beneficiaries of reaction. This was the era when the Standard Oil Company achieved a mastery of Pennsylvania politics so far-reaching and so corrupt that it is difficult to describe it without seeming to exaggerate.
In New York State, United States Senator Platt was the absolute boss of the Republican party. “Big business” was back of him; yet at the time this, the most important element in his strength, was only imperfectly understood. It was not until I was elected Governor that I myself came to understand it. We were still accustomed to talking of the “machine” as if it were something merely political, with which business had nothing to do. Senator Platt did not use his political position to advance his private fortunes—therein differing absolutely from many other political bosses. He lived in hotels and had few extravagant tastes. Indeed, I could not find that he had any tastes at all except for politics, and on rare occasions for a very dry theology wholly divorced from moral implications. But big businessmen contributed to him large sums of money, which enabled him to keep his grip on the machine and secured for them the help of the machine if they were threatened with adverse legislation. The contributions were given in the guise of contributions for campaign purposes, of money for the good of the party; when the money was contributed there was rarely talk of specific favors in return.8 It was simply put into Mr. Platt’s hands and treated by him as in the campaign chest. Then he distributed it in the districts where it was most needed by the candidates and organization leaders. Ordinarily no pledge was required from the latter to the bosses, any more than it was required by the businessmen from Mr. Platt or his lieutenants. No pledge was needed. It was all a “gentlemen’s understanding.” As the Senator once said to me, if a man’s character was such that it was necessary to get a promise from him, it was clear proof that his character was such that the promise would not be worth anything after it was made.
It must not be forgotten that some of the worst practices of the machine in dealings of this kind represented merely virtues in the wrong place, virtues wrenched out of proper relation to their surroundings. A man in a doubtful district might win only because of the help Mr. Platt gave him; he might be a decent young fellow without money enough to finance his own campaign, who was able to finance it only because Platt of his own accord found out or was apprised of his need and advanced the money. Such a man felt grateful, and, because of his good qualities, joined with the purely sordid and corrupt heelers and crooked politicians to become part of the Platt machine. In his turn Mr. Platt was recognized by the businessmen, the big contributors, as an honorable man; not only a man of his word, but a man who, whenever he received a favor, could be trusted to do his best to repay it on any occasion that arose. I believe that usually the contributors, and the recipient, sincerely felt that the transaction was proper and subserved the cause of good politics and good business; and, indeed, as regards the major part of the contributions, it is probable that this was the fact, and that the only criticism that could properly be made about the contributions was that they were not made with publicity—and at that time neither the parties nor the public had any realization that publicity was necessary, or any adequate understanding of the dangers of the “invisible empire” which throve by what was done in secrecy. Many, probably most, of the contributors of this type never wished anything personal in exchange for their contributions, and made them with sincere patriotism, desiring in return only that the Government should be conducted on a proper basis. Unfortunately, it was, in practice, exceedingly difficult to distinguish these men from the others who contributed big sums to the various party bosses with the expectation of gaining concrete and personal advantages (in which the bosses shared) at the expense of the general public. It was very hard to draw the line between
