In other words, it is practically impossible to bring the rabble element to take an active part in good government. There is no possible organization of these corrupt groups save on the basis of corrupt leadership. Bryce made a study of the subject and devotes several pages to it (_American Commonwealth_, chap. cxviii), and although always optimistic, he is not able to point to any genuine source of relief. The “machine,” he says, “will not be reformed from within; it must be assailed from without.” His hopes for future relief are based on Civil Service reform, the secret ballot, and time. To rely on time is childish. Civil Service reform, if pushed to extremes, will give us a bureaucracy, such as has afflicted Germany and Russia. The secret ballot was the hope of political dreamers who imagined the rabble as possessed of hidden springs of knowledge and virtue; as secretly devoted to causes and leaders they never even heard of and never want to hear of. In the same chapter Bryce admits the possibility of future “strife and danger,” and closes it by speaking of “a hope that is stronger than anxiety.” This devil-may-care attitude may be appropriate to a foreigner, but no American worth his salt is willing to sit down in the face of such threatened danger and wait for time and chance to save the country. Those who will not make a move to save themselves are not worth saving. The _Fortnightly Review_ recently says, in explanation of Bolshevism in Russia, that “the dregs of society have come to the surface, as they will anywhere when the ordered fabric of civilization built up on respect for law and personal rights is broken up.” But this is precisely what they are constantly invited to do by manhood suffrage. If it is not an invitation to the dregs to come to the surface, what is it? If they are in power it is because we have been silly enough to open the door. Today they are organized for party plunder; tomorrow they may combine to loot the country. CHAPTER XII INJURIOUS EFFECT OF MANHOOD SUFFRAGE UPON AMERICAN LEGISLATIVE BODIES