They are cultivated plants, which, if not
precisely specified in the plan of the American political and economic
garden, have at least been encouraged by traditional methods of
cultivation.
The fact that this dangerous usurpation of power has been accomplished
partly by illegal methods has blinded many reformers to two
considerations, which have a vital relation to both the theory and the
practice of reform. Violation of the law was itself partly the result of
conflicting and unwise state legislation, and for this reason did not
seem very heinous either to its perpetrators or to public opinion. But
even if the law had not been violated, similar results would have
followed. Under the traditional American system, with the freedom
permitted to the individual, with the restriction placed on the central
authority, and with its assumption of a substantial identity between the
individual and the public interest--under such a system unusually
energetic and unscrupulous men were bound to seize a kind and an amount
of political and economic power which was not entirely wholesome.
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