They never fully comprehended what defeated them.

They would get the support of men who were active in caucuses and nominating conventions and supposed with excellent reason that they were safe.

But there was in every factory village in Massachusetts some man of influence and ability and wealth, frequently a large employer of labor, who had been in the habit of depending on Mr.Dawes for the security of his most important interests, so far as they could be affected by legislation.

They knew him and they knew that he knew them, and their power when they chose to exert it could not be resisted.
Persons who saw Mr.Dawes in his later years only, when he sat quietly in his seat in the Senate, taking little part save in a few special subjects, could not realize what a power he had been when he was the leading and strongest champion in that great body which contained Blaine and Bingham and Butler and Schenck and Farnsworth and Allison and Eugene Hale and Garfield.
When Mr.Dawes left the Senate in 1893, his associates gave a banquet in his honor, at which I made the following remarks.
They were, I believe, approved by the entire company.

I record them here as my deliberate judgment: "If there be any admirer of other forms of government who think unfavorably of our republican fashion of selecting our rulers, I would invite him to examine the list of men whom Massachusetts for a hundred years has chosen as her Senators of the first class.