“Sooner or later there is evolved the boss, the fruit and flower of commercial politics in America. He represents the main interest but also holds the balance between the minor tributary groups. The secrecy necessary for his work gives him great power. He alone holds all the threads that bind the system together. In his person are united the confidence of the favored interests and the hopes of his political lieutenants. He commands the source of supplies. He has mastered the study of political psychology and knows by intimate experience the personal character of the prominent politicians in the state. Most of them are dependent upon him for future favors or are bound to him through past indiscretions. The character of the system demands an absolute ruler. For this reason, too, the power of the boss is continuous; it is rarely overthrown from within and only a great public upheaval can affect it. Bosses maintain themselves in the saddle and enjoy a long lease of power, because of their direct and confidential relations with the controlling interests; their inborn secretiveness leads them to keep their own counsel, and not to allow any other person a complete insight into all the intricacies of the system. They grow stronger as the years pass and no indiscretion or even crime is able to shake their authority while they keep in their hands the main threads connecting influence with its obedient tools. The abler men of this type are filled with a keen sense of the irony of their position. They have the clear insight into the coarser actualities of politics that characterized Machiavelli. The political exhorter who sways the multitudes from the stump does not become a boss; to achieve that position the power of cool analysis, of impassive control, and of unflinching execution, are more essential than any gifts of popular leadership.” (_American Legislatures and Legislative Methods_, pp. 236, 237.) Another sketch: