Most of the office holders are practically independent of the people. In the cities especially, they occupy salaried places, obtained by the use of back stairs or secret influence. They could of course be ousted by a united public demand, but such demand as that is in most cases inconceivable and will never be made; no one but the politicians know these men, or have in mind the particulars of their duties and appointments: and none but politicians would have the patience or skill to manage a public movement to oust them. As a matter of fact few of them ever are finally expelled from political life; they are merely transferred from time to time from one job to another. To one who knows, it is often pathetically ludicrous to hear a voter incensed by the tyranny or incapacity of some office holder threaten to withhold his vote from him “next time.” The irate citizen will probably forget all about “next time,” or will never hear of its having arrived; or the next office will be an appointive one, higher up. Even if he do carry out his threat it will be like putting a straw down in an elephant’s path; the question whether the object of his wrath will go on the ticket will be decided not as the result of a public discussion, but of a secret conference, and whether elected or defeated, the majorities will be mostly composed of myriads of voters who have blindly obeyed the will of the machine and scarcely noticed the name of the candidate. The protest of the individual voter if too much emphasized, is most likely to injure himself. Even a great daily city newspaper usually finds it a hopeless task to attempt to down the machine or its candidates; indeed, the latter have been known to triumph over four or five dailies united. Sometimes an office holder is detected in a scandalous transaction and the machine deems it prudent to temporarily retire him; but if his dirty work was done for the organization’s behoof and benefit, he may soon be seen occupying a still higher appointive office, or placed on the state or county ticket at a presidential election and voted into power by an immense self-satisfied and innocent majority of the very people who a year or two ago condemned him mercilessly, and who in the meantime have actually forgotten his name.