"machine" that they know will let them alone. But, indeed, the most
"respectable" trusts and public-service corporations are often most
culpable, and the greatest power behind the throne. Their interest
in the personnel of the Government is far keener than that of the average
citizen; they can usually succeed, by cleverly specious presentations
of the situation, in dividing the forces against them, and often, by
"deals," in effecting secret alliances of the "rings" in control of
supposedly opposing parties. The poor are right in supposing that these
powerful "interests" are their greatest enemy; as that keen observer
of our national life, Mr. Bryce, has put it, "the power of money is
for popular governments the most constant source of danger."

(4) But, after all, this combination of forces in defiance of the
common weal would not be effective but for the comparative indifference
of the people, which may thus be called a contributing factor. The
average voter feels no stimulus of self-interest in the matter; "what
is everybody's business is nobody's business," and the individual finds
his personal influence so slight that it seems hardly worth his pains
to do anything about it. Occasionally popular passions become aroused
and reform movements make a clean sweep; but the result is usually
temporary, and when the general attention is turned elsewhere the
bosses creep back to power. Modern life has so many more personal
interests in it than the ancient republics had, that public affairs
seldom become so big and absorbing an interest. And the more public
affairs become the concern of a special group of men with dubious
reputations, the more politics are shunned by the average citizen.
Home life and business, social life and amusements, aesthetic,
intellectual, and religious interests, are so much more attractive
to him, that he gives little heed to political conditions, lets himself
be duped by newspaper talk, and votes blindly some party ticket, without