Democratic Sentinel, Volume 13, Number 9, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 March 1889 — PLUTOCRACY REIGNS. [ARTICLE]

PLUTOCRACY REIGNS.

THE REPUBLICAN PARTY THE BUB - WARE OF MONOPOLIES. A Cabinet Selected Became It Controls Millions of Slielcel* for the Corruption Fund—Facts Which Recall the Manner In Wh ch the Positions and Then the Victory Were Purchased. [From the New York World.] The Republican patty returns to power is the bulwark of monopolies and the chosen agent of the money power. It has placed in the second office in the Government a man who o\te3 his elevation solely to his pocket-book. The accession of Levi P. Morton to tbe Vice Presidency may well serve as an illustration and a warning of the steady growth of a plutocracy in ; the United States. The day of Mr. Morj ton’s inauguration sees boodle first openly I triumphant in the nation. It is the beginning of an oligarchy of wealth. It signifies that the scepter of power has .passed from the citizen to the check-book, j That this characterization of Mr. Morton is borne out by facts the history of his j career will amply prove. That money was ; relied on and used to carry the election these concurrent evidences will demon- ! strate: 1. When the Republican National Convention was in session at Chicago, Acting j Vice President Ingalls wrote from Washington to a Kansas delegate in that body advising the nomination for Vice President of “some fellow like Phelps of New | Jersey, who could get contributions from ! the manufacturers and Wall street.” Mr. Morton was the “fellow like Phelps” who was nominated. And there is no doubt that he did the work expected of him. For his services in raising the $400,000 corruption fund which “saved Indiana” in 1880, as certified by Dorsey, the “savior,” Mr. Morton received the French mission as a decoration. For a similar service this year he receives the office once filled by Adams and Jefferson. 2. In the circular letter of President Foster, of the National Republican League, to the rich manufacturers who, as a Republican Senator privately wrote, “get practically the sole benefit of the tariff laws,” the burden of the appeal-was: “We want money and want it at once.” 3. John Wanamaker, who is to receive a Cabinet position as his reward for raising the largest contribution to the corruption fund, lately said to a friend: “Quay urged the matter, and told me why he felt sure of carrying the election it he had money. ” 4. Colonel W. W. Dudley, Treasurer of the National Republican Committee, in his letter of instructions to the Chairmen of County Committees in Indiana, said: “Your committee will certainly receive from Chairman Huston tbe financial assistance necessary to hold oar tlouters and doubtful voters, and gain enough of the other kind to give Han Von and Morton 10,000 majority.” And then followed the famous direction in this manual of bribery—to “divide the floaters into blocks of five, and put a trusted mau with nece-sary funds in charge of those five, and make him responsib.e that none get away, and that all vote onr ticket.” . f>. Colonel Elliott F. Shepard’s Mail and Express, in a flush of Pharisaic anger and chagrin at having contributed money to buy votes which were not delivered according to promise, blurted out the fact that to the persoual knowledge of its editor slsll, Dot) was placed in hands outside the regular Republican committees, to “purchase the three movements” organized in this city by Coogan and the two O’Briens. If anything were needed to show that these enormous sums of money were actually used in corrupting the elections and bribing voters, the Worli supplied tbe proof in the investigations made by its representatives after the election. In this State, in Indiana, in New Jersey, and Connecticut a shameful and startling story of the wholes de and organized purchase of votes resulted fiom the investigations. So detailed and corroberative was the evidence unearthed by the World that it has never been denied, and was accepted by Judge Holman—mistakenly, ve must think, and to the lasting disgrace of the House—as doing away with the necessity of a Congressional investigation. Notorious and scandalous as these facts are they are not so amazing as is the apparent indifference of the people lo them. Can it be that intelligent American citizens do not remember the warnings of history? Have they forgotten that the failure and fall of the republics of the past were due to the corruptions of wealth and the usurpations of a plutocracy? Compared with the evil and danger of a purchased suffrage and the rule of a selfish money power all other wrongs in our Government are trivial. These strike at the root ot’ democracy. They destroy the political equality of citizens. They substitute the cunning and self-in-terest of the few for the will and welfare of the majority. The moral effect of this corruption is quite as bad as its political injustice. Our best elements are our worst elements. The self-styled best elements of society furnish the means for most of the corrupt on in elections and in the Government. As Judge Gresham pithily said: “It is the Pharisees who are doing this. It men of prominence and respectability who raise these large sums of money knowing the use they will be put to—men who deal openly in corruption one day and go to church the next. ” The evil is comparatively a new one in j this country. "Writing of his observations jf “Democracy in America” in 1831, De j Tocqueville said: “In the United States I have never heard a man accused of spending his wealth to corrupt the populace.” Even thirty years ago the use of campaign corruption funds was practically unknown. There were corruption and malfeasance in office, but great public positions were not sold to tbe highest bidder, nor did the nat onal committees of parties undertake the wholesale debauchery of States. But to-day the Government in this country is gravitating rapidly toward the state from which DeTocqueville thought the young Republic was guarded. “In aristocratic Governments,” wrote that ; astute observer, “the individuals who are I placed at the head of affairs are rich men, who are solely desirous of power. And, as the number of persons by whose as- ! sistance they may rise is comparatively | small, the Government is, if I may use the expression, put up at a sort of auction. ” l If this had been written as a prophecy,

would we not 6ee its fulfillment in America to-dav? Prof. Bryce, that second and betterequipped DeTocqueville, perceived as a tendency what is now an accomplished i fact, and in his masterly work on “The I American Commonwealth,” recently pub- | lished, he says: ! Plot >cracy used to be considered a form ! of oligarchy, and opposed to democracy, j But there is a strong plutocratic element i infused into American democracy, and tbe I fact that it is entirely unrecognized in eon- ! stitutions makes it not less potent and posI sibly more mis ihievous. Tbe influence of I money is one of the dangers which the people have always to gua’ a against, for it assails not merely the legislative, but the party machinery, and it- methods are as numerous as they are insidious. During the present session of the Senate Mr. Stanford, who, through the complaisance of the State of Caliiornia, represents the Central Pacific Railroad in that “club of millionaires, ” showed his power by going before a committee of the Senate and declaring that the Union Pacific Railroad funding bill “snould not pass” unless bis own railroad were given equal consideration. The “courtesy of the Senate" enabled him to “protect his pioperty,” and the incident was so much . a matter of course as to attract little attention. The report of the Pacific Railway Commission last year, said: “There is no loom for doubt that a large portion of the sum of $4,818,000 was used for the purpose of influencing legislation and elections.” Mr. Huntington, the Vice President of the Central Pacific Railway, has openly defended the employment of skilled lobbyists at Washington to “look after the interests of the company in connection with the executive, legislative, and judicial departments of Government,” and has refused to account for more than $1,000,000 disbursed to these agents. These are but incidents of the growth of plutocracy and the increase of bribery within the past thirty years. If it shall continue in the same ration for the next thirty, what sort of a republic shall we then have? What is the remedy? There can be no cure of these evils that does rot proceed from an amused and imperative public opinion. It is the dreadful inertia of indifference that must first be overcome. The people will care if thev can be made to feel and to see the danger. There is a work for the pulpit. Where sleep the thunderers of righteous condemnation that rolled from the pulpit against human slavery? If the will of the people be the wili of God, is not a crime against the suffrage a concern of religion? It is a work for the press. Public opinion will never be aroused against corruption by the politicians. They will not quarrel with their trade. The press could have done it ere this had ic joined with the World in forcing on Congress the duty of a thorough investigation of the management of the late ehetion by both parties. Exposuie, thorough, complete and both-sided, can only prepare the wav for reform—exposure not merely of actual vote-buying but of all election expenses, particularly the so-called “legitimate” expenses of candidates and committees.

As an aid to honest electons, purer politics, and better government, two national abuses should be uprooted, and two amendments be made to Stite election laws. Take the offices as spoils out of politics, aud remove from the tariff the bounties whereby men “make large fortunes every year when the times are good,” and the selfish interest in elections which contributes enormous corruption funds to cany them would largely disappear. In other words, diminish the stake and you discourage the gamblers. So much the nation may do. * The State can apply a remedy by providing the ballots and protecting the voters in secrecy in casting them, and by limiting the expense of campaigns and requiring publicity to expenditures, as has been done with such good results in England.