“All legislative bodies which control important pecuniary interests are as sure to have a lobby as an army to have its camp followers. Where the body is, there will the vultures be gathered together. Great and wealthy States, like New York, and Pennsylvania, support the largest and most active lobbies.... Thus there are at Washington, says Mr. Spofford, ‘pension lobbyists, tariff lobbyists, steamship subsidy lobbyists, railway lobbyists, Indian ring lobbyists, patent lobbyists, river and harbour lobbyists, mining lobbyists, bank lobbyists, mail-contract lobbyists, war damages lobbyists, back-pay and bounty lobbyists, Isthmus canal lobbyists, public building lobbyists, State claims lobbyists, cotton-tax lobbyists, and French spoliations lobbyists. Of the office-seeking lobbyists at Washington it may be said that their name is legion. There are even artist lobbyists, bent upon wheedling Congress into buying bad paintings and worse sculptures; and too frequently with success.’”
He also says that women are said to be among the most active and successful lobbyists at Washington, and that they have been widely employed and efficient in soliciting members of the Legislature with a view to the passing of private bills and the obtaining of places. (_American Commonwealth_, Vol. I, p. 680; Vol. II, p. 732.)
So here let us end the chapter on the politicians, with the picture of a purchasable legislature created by a political machine and representing a purchasable manhood suffrage constituency, and of the traffic conducted by bosses and rings on one side and a lobby on the other. Granted American activity, and enterprise in public improvements to cause the stream of dollars to flow steadily, and what more is required to produce what Mr. Carnegie happily dubs “Triumphant Democracy”?
THE EFFECT OF MANHOOD SUFFRAGE IS TO FASTEN ON THE COUNTRY AND MAKE PERMANENT THE RULE OF THE POLITICIANS
The political oligarchies rule, have ruled and will continue to rule this country through the medium of the controllable vote. This is plainly inferable from what has already been said about the strength and operations of the Machine, and is in a vague way to some extent understood or at least suspected throughout the country. The object of this chapter is to emphasize it, to bring it home to the reader, to make him realize it, and to cause him to reflect upon it, and to thoroughly appreciate the absolute impossibility of throwing off the odious bondage of the politicians unless and until the suffrage is restricted to a well-qualified class of voters.