Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1888-03-08
WHO ARE BOSSES.


mean by bosses There must always be
bosses; they are necessary to party man
agement; if one man is not boss another
will be. Then why not use and influence
these bosses instead of fighting them. Can
not more good be accomplished in that
way than by contention with them ?" The
answer is obvious. The argument of QUE
correspondent would apply as we'll to any
vicious influence; "use but do not oppose
it," The difficulty with such reasoning is
that 1t confesses the inability of men for
self-government, and that no man beliey
ing in representative system can afford
to make.
John q. Holland declared in his day
and he was wise among men as were but
few-that " the prolific source of all our
political corruption is office-seeking.
When men are sought for, and adopted as
are candidates for office, it is, ninety-nine
times in every hundred, because they are
available for the objects of party. Thus
it is that selfish or party interest, and not
public good, becomes the motive in po-
licical preferment, and the results are the
legitimate fruit of the motive Out of
this motive spring all the intrigues bar
gains, sales of influence and patronage, cor
ruptions and crookedness that make our
politics reproach"
This was too sweeping, and it was faulty
in not taking into consideration the cor
rupt political boss 1t is not true that all
men seeking preferment are actuated by
impure motives. There are ambitious men
who go through life and politics clean
hearted and clean-handed There are
those, and they are in the majority, who,
to accomplish their ambitions, consent to
employment of methods wholly disreputa-
BILE, and for that purpose form connections
that in social life they abhor, and would
not for an instant countenance. 1t is de-
plorable that this is true, but it is undeni-
able. Others there are. insensible to the
pricks Of conscience, and having little or
no self-respect, who from the outset ally
themselves with vicious influences for the
purpose of obtaining positions of trust.
These are bad enough, they assail the sys-
TEN of free'government and prostitute their
sovereignty, but they sink into insignif-
canoe beside the men who openly keep
political pawn and broker shops, and deal
in nominations and votes as hucksters in
the stalls.
These enemies of self-govanment usurp
the honorable title of leader" and mask
behind the name of organizer" They are
neither, for they assume to lead by reducing
voting and ofice-flling, to the low level of
barter and sale; they buy votes and sell
them, for coin; they peddle offices and par
tition patronage for gold, utterly regard
less of the inevitable result upon system
of free government and blind to the his,
tory of venality in early democracies.
They abominably and shamefully resort 10
corrupt practices to defeat the popular will,
and stick at nothing to mold it to their ends
Greed is the motive with most of these,
and love of power with others. They
never have the cause of good government
at heart office is to them simply means
for bleeding office-aspiring men in the first
place, and the public treasury in the next
They have no politics; their political
creed is completely covered by the area of
a dollar or compassed by the percentage
they wiring from the weak men who per-
NIT themselves to be bled. They are for
party simply because it is an agency they
can employ, never because it represents
principle in government. They deal in
manhood as commodity; they are politi-
clans to the extent that politics is bread
and butter to them. They control, because
men are weak on the one hand and corrupt
on the other, or neglectful of their obliga-
tions to society and Indifferent to the pub
lie good.
They are overthrown when there come
about quarrels in their own ranks which
are improved to work revolution; and
when the people, in periodical great upris-
lngs against corruption and wrong, find the
burdens put upon them by these uncon-
scionable fellows wholly unbearable. No
table instances are the overthrow of the
Tweed ring, the breaking the backbone of
the Chicago McGargle clique, the up
heaval that has convulsed San Francisco
about once in every decade, the result that
stirred Brooklyn to purge itself 1888, and
led Philadelphia to rise up in 1884 and
turn the thieves, robbers, and money
changers out of the municipal temple, and
which ought to upheave Sacramento in
1888.
These are the men, this is the cattle we
invariably mean whenever we speak of
bosses-not leaders by right of brain force
not organizers by reason of genius for
maintaining forces; not Captains born to
lead and loyal to political principles, nor
Generals commissioned by nature to com
mand, and employing only those legiti-
mate agencies in the interest of party SUI
premacy that are approved of all men,
Captains, leaders, organizers loyal chief
tains party must have, ought to have, will
have; but the boss is an excrescence, a
tumor upon the party body that must be,
and will be, excised- by the keen knife of
reform.
THE GLASS BALLOT-BOX.