The professional politicians who had embarked in politics as a business and who were making what they could out of it for themselves and their followers, could not resist this unexpected and lucrative addition to their market.

But it must be remembered that the alliance was founded on interest rather than association, on mutual agreement rather than on any effective subordination one to another.

A certain change in conditions might easily make their separate interests diverge, and abstract all the profits from their traffic.

If anything happened, for instance, to make inter-state railroad corporations less dependent on the state governments, they would no longer need the expense of subsidizing the state machines.

There are signs at the present time that these interests are diverging, and that such alliances will be less dangerous in the future than they have been in the past.