The masters need not bribe. They need not resort to illegal or unethical methods. The ordinary channels of advertising, of business acquaintance and patronage, of philanthropy and of social intercourse clinch their power over the channels of public opinion. 9. _The Control of Political Machinery_ The American government,--city, state and nation--is in almost the same position as the schools, newspapers and churches. It does not turn out tangible, economic products. It depends, for its support, upon taxes which are levied, in the first instance, upon property. Who are the owners of this property? The business interests. Who, therefore, pay the bills of the government? The business interests. Nowhere has the issue been stated more clearly or more emphatically than by Woodrow Wilson in certain passages of his "New Freedom." As a student of politics and government--particularly the American Government--he sees the power which those who control economic life are able to exercise over public affairs, and realizes that their influence has grown, until it overtops that of the political world so completely that the machinery of politics is under the domination of the organizers and directors of industry. "We know," writes Mr. Wilson in "The New Freedom," "that something intervenes between the people of the United States and the control of their own affairs at Washington. It is not the people who have been ruling there of late" (p. 28). "The masters of the government of the United States are the combined capitalists and manufacturers of the United States.... Suppose you go to Washington and try to get at your government. You will always find that while you are politely listened to, the men really consulted are the men who have the biggest stakes--the big bankers, the big manufacturers, the big masters of commerce, the heads of railroad corporations and of steamship corporations.... Every time it has come to a critical question, these gentlemen have been yielded to and their demands have been treated as the demands that should be followed as a matter of course. The government of the United States at present is a foster-child of the special interests" (p. 57-58). "The organization of business has become more centralized, vastly more centralized, than the political organization of the country itself" (p. 187). "An invisible empire has been set up above the forms of democracy" (p. 35). "We are all caught in a great economic system which is heartless" (p. 10). This is the direct control exercised by the plutocracy over the machinery of government. Its indirect control is no less important, and is exercised in exactly the same way as in the case of the channels of public opinion.