politicians, wire-pullers, busybodies, local journalists, and small
lawyers, working for various monetary interests, have "captured" the
local Conservative organization. They have time and energy to capture
it, because they have no other interest in life except that. It is their
"business," and honest men are busy with other duties. For reasons that
do not appear these local "workers" put up an unknown Mr. Goldbug as the
official Conservative candidate. He professes a generally Conservative
view of things, but few people are sure of him and few people trust him.
Against him the weaker (and therefore still more venal) Liberal
organization now puts up a Mr. Kentshire (formerly Wurstberg) to
represent the broader thought and finer generosities of the English
mind. A number of Conservative gentlemen, generally too busy about their
honest businesses to attend the party "smokers" and the party cave,
realize suddenly that they want Goldbug hardly more than they want
Wurstberg. They put up their long-admired, trusted, and able friend Mr.
Sanity as an Independent Conservative.

Every one knows the trouble that follows. Mr. Sanity is "going to split
the party vote." The hesitating voter is told, with considerable truth,
that a vote given for Mr. Sanity is a vote given for Wurstberg. At any
price the constituency does not want Wurstberg. So at the eleventh hour
Mr. Sanity is induced to withdraw, and Mr. Goldbug goes into Parliament
to misrepresent this constituency. And so with most constituencies, and
the result is a legislative body consisting largely of men of unknown
character and obscure aims, whose only credential is the wearing of a
party label. They come into parliament not to forward the great
interests they ostensibly support, but with an eye to the railway
jobbery, corporation business, concessions and financial operations that
necessarily go on in and about the national legislature. That in its
simplest form is the dilemma of democracy. The problem that has