Another class of men, if they vote at all, do so on no general principle of public welfare, but solely for their own advantage at the expense of their fellow men. These are to be found among the rich manufacturers, the coal, and iron, and railway kings, and the manipulators of the crops of the nation. Rarely casting a ballot in person, they give notice to their thousands of employés that if the latter do not support the candidates or the party which they happen to favor, the employés’ places will be given to more pliant servants. These men are as non-partisan as the most ardent reformer could wish. One of them, a few years ago when questioned by an investigating committee of the New York state legislature, said: “In a republican district I was a strong republican; in a democratic district I was democratic; and in doubtful districts I was doubtful, but in politics I was an Erie railroad man every time.” Another famous man of the same type said he had no politics; that he found it cheaper to buy up one set of legislators after they were elected than to purchase two sets of candidates before election. These corrupt men, counting their wealth by tens of millions, influencing state legislatures and the national Congress, and throwing their weight into Presidential campaigns, constitute the chief “dangerous class” in the United States to-day, far more threatening to the permanency of free institutions than the anarchists who were hanged at Chicago. Then there are the illy-paid employés of these men who do their bidding at the polls, voting for the candidates of their masters. Promise of office or patronage lures others into the support of one party or the other. Lastly come the poorest of the poor who live in the most miserable tenement houses, or when single hive in the big lodging-houses which are found chiefly in New York and Chicago. A ton of coal or a barrel of flour is the bribe to the former, frequently effected through the medium of the poor wretch’s wife who does not care for politics but sees a very material advantage in the food or fuel offered by the ward worker. The lodging-house voters, paid by drinks of whiskey or dollar bills, until recently in New York were marshalled in squads of twenty or thirty early on the morning of election day, given their ballots and compelled to hold them aloft between the thumb and forefinger of the right hand so that the heeler or paid servant of some political faction might watch them from the moment they took their place in the line of voters until their ballots were handed to the election inspectors and dropped in the box. Both parties wink at such frauds and their henchmen directly countenance and assist in them but the party that happens to be in the majority in any locality is usually the one most guilty. The result is that the minority affects great virtue and loudly denounces the corruption of its opponents.