They disliked coarse and vulgar politicians,
and they sincerely reprobated all the shortcomings that were recognized
by, and were offensive to, people of their own caste. They had not the
slightest understanding of the needs, interests, ways of thought, and
convictions of the average small man; and the small man felt this,
although he could not express it, and sensed that they were really not
concerned with his welfare, and that they did not offer him anything
materially better from his point of view than the machine.
When reformers of this type attempted to oppose Mr. Platt, they usually
put up either some rather inefficient, well-meaning person, who
bathed every day, and didn't steal, but whose only good point was
"respectability," and who knew nothing of the great fundamental
questions looming before us; or else they put up some big business man
or corporation lawyer who was wedded to the gross wrong and injustice
of our economic system, and who neither by personality nor by programme
gave the ordinary plain people any belief that there was promise of
vital good to them in the change. The correctness of their view was
proved by the fact that as soon as fundamental economic and social
reforms were at stake the aesthetic, as distinguished from the genuinely
moral, reformers, for the most part sided with the bosses against the
people.
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