substance, like cake, which could be handed out at will, in tangible
masses, if only the demand were urgent enough. These parlor reformers
made up for inefficiency in action by zeal in criticising; and they
delighted in criticising the men who really were doing the things which
they said ought to be done, but which they lacked the sinewy power to
do. They often upheld ideals which were not merely impossible but highly
undesirable, and thereby played into the hands of the very politicians
to whom they professed to be most hostile. Moreover, if they believed
that their own interests, individually or as a class, were jeoparded,
they were apt to show no higher standards than did the men they usually
denounced.

One of their shibboleths was that the office should seek the man and not
the man the office. This is entirely true of certain offices at certain
times. It is entirely untrue when the circumstances are different.
It would have been unnecessary and undesirable for Washington to
have sought the Presidency. But if Abraham Lincoln had not sought the
Presidency he never would have been nominated. The objection in such a
case as this lies not to seeking the office, but to seeking it in any
but an honorable and proper manner. The effect of the shibboleth in
question is usually merely to put a premium on hypocrisy, and therefore
to favor the creature who is willing to rise by hypocrisy. When I ran
for Speaker, the whole body of machine politicians was against me, and
my only chance lay in arousing the people in the different districts. To
do this I had to visit the districts, put the case fairly before the men
whom I saw, and make them understand that I was really making a fight
and would stay in the fight to the end. Yet there were reformers who
shook their heads and deplored my "activity" in the canvass. Of course
the one thing which corrupt machine politicians most desire is to have
decent men frown on the activity, that is, on the efficiency, of the