This senator was the tool and the slave, the little puppet of a
gross, uneducated machine boss; so was this governor and this supreme
court judge; and all three rode on railroad passes. This man,
talking soberly and earnestly about the beauties of idealism and the
goodness of God, had just betrayed his comrades in a business deal.
This man, a pillar of the church and heavy contributor to foreign
missions, worked his shop girls ten hours a day on a starvation wage
and thereby directly encouraged prostitution. This man, who endowed
chairs in universities, perjured himself in courts of law over a
matter of dollars and cents. And this railroad magnate broke his
word as a gentleman and a Christian when he granted a secret rebate
to one of two captains of industry locked together in a struggle to
the death.
It was the same everywhere, crime and betrayal, betrayal and crime--
men who were alive, but who were neither clean nor noble, men who
were clean and noble, but who were not alive. Then there was a
great, hopeless mass, neither noble nor alive, but merely clean.
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