Republican party to support the Union in return for the duties they wanted on their manufactures. For years almost the sole appeal made by candidates to the people of the state has been selfish. They have had a steady education in the notion that government is something from which to get a personal advantage. Is it strange that the Pennsylvanian should come to regard all public undertakings, even the building of a state capitol, as legitimate prey? It is a logical enough chain from the instructions of Thaddeus Stevens and “Pig Iron” Kelley to a tariff-made Pittsburg, blind to the appalling inhumanity of her mills, or to the shameless looting of a great state building. Once the appeal to men’s greed is the established rule of a state’s politics, the inevitable outcome is every degree and species of baseness. On the other hand, a people trained by its leaders to think of the general good, to consider principles and ideals as of first importance to national life, to feel that our fundamentals must be preserved before everything else—such a people will rise to any height of enthusiasm and sacrifice. The legislator who is so indifferent to the moral effect of his appeal on the country’s citizenship, who refuses to see the connection between the appeal to selfishness and corruption such as that which in 1884, 1892, and partially in 1910 swept the Republican party from power, can hardly be expected to be nice about the methods he employs to get the things he has promised. Indeed, there is political necessity for just such methods as have been discussed in the previous chapters of this book. They are a part of the whole, perfectly consistent with the appeal, not a whit more immoral. If Mr. Aldrich promises the cotton manufacturers of New England to support their demands, allowing them to raise the money and do the work to reëlect him, can you expect him to do less than he did in the Payne-Aldrich Bill—allow a tricky revision of the cotton schedule to go through?