Nor is the use of the machine confined to the Democratic party; even in New York it is part of the Republican party system also. In an address delivered in New York May 2d, 1880, George William Curtis described the Republican political machine and its operations, how it practically excluded nearly nine-tenths of the Republican voters from the primaries. He stated that the bosses were “huge contractors of votes, traders and hucksters in place and pelf,” who “made personal servility the condition of political success” and were ready to “betray the party by bargaining with the enemy”; “that good men stayed at home feeling” that “politics are tiresome and dirty and politicians vulgar bullies and bravadoes”; that “public officers multiply uselessly that there may be more rewards for political and personal service. Primaries, caucuses, conventions, are controlled by the promise and expectation of a chance of plunder which the machine distributes.” Here is an account of how the votes of working men were used in Philadelphia by the Republican boss McManes, to build up a corrupt political organization: “This gentleman, Mr. James McManes, having gained influence among the humbler voters, was appointed one of the Gas Trustees, and soon managed to bring the whole of that department under his control. It employed (I was told) about two thousand persons, received large sums, and gave out large contracts. Appointing his friends and dependents to the chief places under the Trust, and requiring them to fill the ranks of its ordinary workmen with persons on whom they could rely, the Boss acquired the control of a considerable number of votes and of a large annual revenue. He and his confederates then purchased a controlling interest in the principal horse-car (street tramway) company of the city, whereby they became masters of a large number of additional voters. All these voters were of course expected to act as ‘workers,’ i.e., they occupied themselves with the party organization of the city, they knew the meanest streets and those who dwelt therein, they attended and swayed the primaries, and when an election came round, they canvassed and brought up the voters. Their power, therefore, went far beyond their mere voting strength, for a hundred energetic ‘workers’ mean at least a thousand votes. With so much strength behind them, the Gas Ring, and Mr. McManes at its head, became not merely indispensable to the Republican party in the city, but in fact its chiefs, able therefore to dispose of the votes of all those who were employed permanently or temporarily in the other departments of the city government--a number which one hears estimated as high as twenty thousand. Nearly all the municipal offices were held by their nominees. They commanded a majority in the Select council and Common council.