instrument of control, and men who had business interests to promote
naturally resorted to the body which exercised the control.

There need have been nothing sinister about this. If the whole matter had
been open and candid and honest, public criticism would not have centred
upon it. But the use of money always results in demoralization, and goes
beyond demoralization to actual corruption. There are two kinds of
corruption,--the crude and obvious sort, which consists in direct bribery,
and the much subtler, more dangerous, sort, which consists in a corruption
of the will. Business men who have tried to set up a control in politics
through the machine have more and more deceived themselves, have allowed
themselves to think that the whole matter was a necessary means of
self-defence, have said that it was a necessary outcome of our political
system. Having reassured themselves in this way, they have drifted from
one thing to another until the questions of morals involved have become
hopelessly obscured and submerged. How far away from the ideals of their
youth have many of our men of business drifted, enmeshed in the vicious
system,--how far away from the days when their fine young manhood was
wrapped in "that chastity of honor which felt a stain like a wound!"

It is one of the happy circumstances of our time that the most intelligent
of our business men have seen the mistake as well as the immorality of the
whole bad business. The alliance between business and politics has been a
burden to them,--an advantage, no doubt, upon occasion, but a very
questionable and burdensome advantage. It has given them great power, but
it has also subjected them to a sort of slavery and a bitter sort of
subserviency to politicians. They are as anxious to be freed from bondage
as the country is to be rid of the influences and methods which it
represents. Leading business men are now becoming great factors in the
emancipation of the country from a system which was leading from bad to