Now while the utility and necessity of co-operation between official and unofficial political forces is generally recognised by careful students we have, singularly enough, provided regular and legitimate means of subsistence only for the former, leaving the latter to shift for itself as best it may. Our unofficial political forces, _i.e._, the party organisations and their workers, are, as we have seen, burdened with tasks of enormous magnitude. Under simpler conditions Burke’s “body of men joined together for the purpose of promoting the national interest upon some particular principle” might indeed “by their joint endeavour” alone succeed in performing this work in a patriotic and disinterested spirit. With the growth of American population and the development of our very complex government, however, this became impossible. Steady professional work by a large body of men is demanded under present conditions. Much of this work the politician knows to be necessary and useful even if the full measure of its social utility seldom dawns upon him. Naturally he thinks the labourer worthy of his hire, or, at any rate, he is keenly conscious of his own bread and butter necessities. No regular income being provided for the politician as such, he proceeds to collect it in various ways, some of them perfectly open and even praiseworthy, as in the case of campaign contributions made by disinterested persons, and others distinctly furtive or even corrupt and criminal. Under the old régime if his party was successful at the polls there was, of course, the possibility of a job,—that is of a translation from the unofficial to the official governmental sphere. Even in the hey-day of the spoils system, however, there were never jobs enough to supply the faithful and those who received appointments were consequently “assessed” large sums to pay for the labours of their less fortunate companions in arms. And the politicians of the beaten party went bare although their social service in arousing the people on the issues of the campaign was probably as valuable in proportion to their numbers as that rendered by the workers of the victorious party. Under the circumstances it was inevitable that the party worker in office would pay more attention to the requirements of the machine than to his public duties, and the evils thus occasioned naturally gave rise to civil service reform. Wherever it has been applied the merit system has done much to discourage the collection of party revenues from office holders. As sources of income there remain, however, the manifold possibilities of the sale of political influence ranging all the way from permission to violate a municipal ordinance up to the sale of a franchise or the grant of legislative favours to large private interests. Many of the forms of corruption dealt with in the preceding studies are cases in point.