Good and high-minded men of conservative temperament in their panic played into the hands of the ultra-reactionaries of business and politics.

The alliance between the two kinds of privilege, political and financial, was closely cemented; and wherever there was any attempt to break it up, the cry was at once raised that this merely represented another phase of the assault on National honesty and individual and mercantile integrity.

As so often happens, the excesses and threats of an unwise and extreme radicalism had resulted in immensely strengthening the position of the beneficiaries of reaction.

This was the era when the Standard Oil Company achieved a mastery of Pennsylvania politics so far-reaching and so corrupt that it is difficult to describe it without seeming to exaggerate.
In New York State, United States Senator Platt was the absolute boss of the Republican party.

"Big business" was back of him; yet at the time this, the most important element in his strength, was only imperfectly understood.