The corporate interests had learned efficiency.
Instead of dealing with legislators individually, they arranged
with the boss the price of peace or of desirable legislation. The
boss transmitted his wishes to his puppets. This form of
government depends upon a machine that controls the legislature.
In New York both parties were moved by machines. "Tom" Platt was
the "easy boss" of the Republicans; and Tammany and its
"up-state" affiliations controlled the Democrats. "Right here,"
says Platt in his Autobiography (1910), "it may be appropriate to
say that I have had more or less to do with the organization of
the New York legislature since 1873." He had. For forty years he
practically named the Speaker and committees when his party won,
and he named the price when his party lost. All that an
"interest" had to do, under the new plan, was to "see the boss,"
and the powers of government were delivered into its lap.
Some of this legislative bargaining was revealed in the insurance
investigation of 1905, conducted by the Armstrong Committee with
Charles E. Hughes as counsel. Officers of the New York Life
Insurance Company testified that their company had given $50,000
to the Republican campaign of 1904. An item of $235,000,
innocently charged to "Home office annex account," was traced to
the hands of a notorious lobbyist at Albany. Three insurance
companies had paid regularly $50,000 each to the Republican
campaign fund. Boss Platt himself was compelled reluctantly to
relate how he had for fifteen years received ten one thousand
dollar bundles of greenbacks from the Equitable Life as
"consideration" for party goods delivered.
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