I felt that these men would be broken reeds to which to trust in any vital contest for betterment of social and industrial conditions.
I had neither the training nor the capacity that would have enabled me to match Mr.Platt and his machine people on their own ground.

Nor did I believe that the effort to build up a machine of my own under the then existing conditions would meet the needs of the situation so far as the people were concerned.

I therefore made no effort to create a machine of my own, and consistently adopted the plan of going over the heads of the men holding public office and of the men in control of the organization, and appealing directly to the people behind them.

The machine, for instance, had a more or less strong control over the great bulk of the members of the State Legislature; but in the last resort the people behind these legislators had a still greater control over them.

I made up my mind that the only way I could beat the bosses whenever the need to do so arose (and unless there was such need I did not wish to try) was, not by attempting to manipulate the machinery, and not by trusting merely to the professional reformers, but by making my appeal as directly and as emphatically as I knew how to the mass of voters themselves, to the people, to the men who if waked up would be able to impose their will on their representatives.