In this machine the voter is a very small cog; he neither devised the machine, nor can he in the least control it, nor is it constructed to serve his interests. It is organized in the interests of discipline and on the principle of obedience. In New York, for instance, an important part of the Tammany Machine is the Committee on Organization, composed of the leaders of certain wards and districts, each one of whom either holds a public office or has a valuable public contract or is in some way dependent on the Boss for his yearly income. The committee man looks after his district and is responsible to the Boss for its vote. Not by the people but by the political machines are offices filled, laws enacted, government carried on. The machine discipline though sometimes severe operates on the whole for the benefit of the politician by protecting the faithful. The efficient members of the class of professional politicians are never more than temporarily shelved. If defeated at one election they are chosen at another. If they fail to get one office, room is made for them somewhere else, and so they are made to form a class of permanent office-holders, and the power and efficiency of the political oligarchy are steadily maintained. “The City machine makes friends with saloon keepers, with gamblers and other criminal classes, or with large financial institutions, seeking to obtain control of the vast sums expended for public improvements. This source of revenue has of late proved vastly more fruitful than the earlier and more primitive methods. By means of these various alliances a large body of pledged supporters is secured. In addition to ordinary party officers the machine employs a body of workers formerly known as ward heelers now more generally called workers, gangs, gunmen, or district leaders, some of whom are accustomed to commit various sorts of crime, such as securing fraudulent naturalization papers for foreigners, entering fictitious names on the register of voters, organizing repeaters and voting them on election day.” (_Cyclopedia American Political Government_, Machine, Political, 1914.) We quote once more from Bryce, writing in 1894, as to the operation of machine rule in New York City: