Plainly, if the right spirit in citizenship is to be ascendant, it must
find some means of doing away with the boss system in politics. This
system is made possible only by the ease with which primary elections
are controlled by coteries of designing men. Here is a battlefield where
the best and worst elements in our politics need to be brought into
immediate and conclusive conflict. A system which foists upon the people
as its candidates for office those whom they have had no real voice in
choosing, and who are not worthy, represents an actual subversion of
popular government, and calls for such a manifestation of the spirit of
true Americanism as shall overthrow it once for all. This question is an
overshadowing one. Pollution at the fountain means pollution everywhere.
Men elected to office through shameful methods may sometimes be better
than the methods by which they have profited, but they are not to be
trusted. Their responsibility is to the "bosses," not to the citizens
whose machine-directed votes elected them. The only sentiment to which
they bow is that expressed by the leader whose favor bestowed, and whose
hostility will deprive them of, official position and emoluments. The
immediate outlook is not, however, without hope. Independent movements
in several States are in progress looking to the complete uprooting of
the boss system. In parts of Ohio, Pennsylvania, Indiana, and
California, and in some of the Southern States "the Crawford County
method," which takes the choice of candidates out of the hands of the
few and places it in the hands of the majority of voters, is already
being tried. In Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota similar methods have
been the subject of legislative action, and satisfactory results are
anticipated. This is a reform which should not be left to the advocacy
of a few individuals, or to the members of a few organizations like the
American Institute of Civics and local civic reform bodies. Members of
these bodies have done much and will do more to promote it, but its
final success depends upon the manifestation everywhere of an aroused
public spirit whose demands cannot be denied.