where they could do more good or win more honor. I believe capital will some day prefer to do business with them than with blackmailers and boodlers anywhere.
When that day comes the aldermen will share the credit with the Municipal Voters’ League, but all the character and all the ability of both Council and League will not explain the reform of Chicago. The citizens of that city will take most of the glory. They will have done it, as they have done it so far.
Some of my critics have declared they could not believe there was so much difference in the character of communities as I have described. How can they account, then, for Chicago? The people there have political parties, they are partisans. But they know how to vote. Before the League was started, the records show them shifting their vote to the confusion of well-laid political plans. So they have always had bosses, and they have them now, but these bosses admit that they “can’t boss Chicago.” I think this is partly their fault. William Lorimer, the dominant Republican boss, with whom I talked for an hour one day, certainly does not make the impression, either as a man or as a politician, that Croker makes, or Durham of Philadelphia. But an outsider may easily go wrong on a point like this, and we may leave the credit where 273they lay it, with the people of Chicago. Fisher is
