The boss system, then, appears as the visible part of all the private selfishness in America. It is a great religion of self-interest, with its hierarchy, its chapels, its propaganda, and its confessors in every home. You yourself support it. I saw last week, at your table, a magnate whose business conduct you deplore, and to-day I heard a young man make the comment, that there was no use fighting the current so long as social influence could be bought. Do not accuse Tammany Hall; you yourself have corrupted that young man. So long as you think you can circumvent the laws of force, you will remain a pillar in the temple of iniquity. But look closer still at each of those individuals, and see just what it is he is giving as the purchase money. One man gives $25,000 to pay a president’s private debts, and goes as minister to England; another gives merely his name to indorse a doubtful candidate for the assembly, and receives prospective good will from the organization. What is this great market overt where every one can get what he wants? The syndicate can get the franchises, and the aldermen the cash. No one is too small to be served, or so great as to require nothing. Upon what principle is this monstrous bazaar, this clearing-house for self-interest, conducted? It is as large as the United States--the transcontinental railroads use it--and so well managed that I can get my friend a job as the secretary of a reform movement. What is it that makes this universal shop run so smoothly? It is hooked together simply on business principles. The price you pay is always the rubbing of somebody the right way; the thing you get is advancement or personal comfort of some sort. It has happened, that by the operation of commercial forces, the whole of America’s seventy million people have been polarized into self-seekers; and our total condition is visibly Vanity Fair. You can actually follow the rays of power from the individual to the boss. All the evil in the world is seen to be in league. Embezzlement and laziness, selfish ambition and prejudice, cruelty and timidity here openly play into each other’s hands, support and console each other. Nay, every atom of vice, every impulse of malice or cupidity, can be shown up as a tendon or a sinew of the great organization of selfish forces. It is as if a magic glass had been superposed upon the continent, and, looking down through it, upon the motives of men, all complexity vanished, and we saw all the evil forces pulling one way.