The first time I went to Chicago, to see what form of corruption they had, I found there was something the matter with the political machinery. There was the normal plan of government for a city, rings with bosses, and grafting business interests behind. Philadelphia, Pittsburg, St. Louis, are all governed on such a plan. But in Chicago it didn’t work. “Business” was at a standstill and business was suffering. What was the matter? I beleaguered the political leaders with questions: “Why didn’t the politicians control? What was wrong with the machines?” The “boss” defended the organizations, blaming the people. “But the people could be fooled by any capable politician,” I demurred. The boss blamed the reformers. “Reformers!” I exclaimed. “I’ve seen some of your reformers. They aren’t different from reformers elsewhere, are they?” “No,” he said, well pleased. But when I concluded that it must then be the weakness of the Chicago bosses, his pride cried out. “Say,” he said, “have you seen that blankety-blank Fisher?” I hadn’t, I said. “Well, you want to,” he said, and I went straightway and saw Fisher—Mr. Walter L. Fisher, secretary of the Municipal Voters’ League. Then it was that I began to understand the Chicago political situation. Fisher was a reformer: an able young lawyer of independent means, a mind ripe with high purposes and ideals, self-confident, high-minded, conclusive. He showed me an orderly bureau of indexed information, such as I had seen before. He outlined the scheme of the Municipal Voters’ League, all in a bored, polite, familiar way. There was no light in him nor anything new or vital in his reform as he described it. It was all incomprehensible till I asked him how he carried the Seventeenth Ward, a mixed and normally Democratic ward, in one year for a Republican by some 1300 plurality, the next year for a Democrat by some 1800, the third for a Republican again. His face lighted up, a keen, shrewd look came into his eyes, and he said: “I did not carry that ward; its own people did it, but I’ll tell you how it was managed.” And he told me a story that was politics. I asked about another ward, and he told me the story of that. It was entirely different, but it, too, was politics. Fisher is a politician—with the education, associations, and the idealism of the reformers who fail, this man has cunning, courage, tact, and, rarer still, faith in the people. In short, reform in Chicago has such a leader as corruption alone usually has; a first-class executive mind and a natural manager of men.