That was carryin' things to excess.

There's a limit to everything, and the Philadelphia Republicans go beyond the limit.

It seems like they can't be cool and moderate like real politicians.

It ain't fair, therefore, to class Tammany men with the Philadelphia gang.
Any man who undertakes to write political books should never for a moment lose sight of the distinction between honest graft and dishonest graft, which I explained in full in another talk.

If he puts all kinds of graft on the same level, he'll make the fatal mistake that Steffens made and spoil his book.
A big city like New York or Philadelphia or Chicago might be compared to a sort of Garden of Eden, from a political point of view.