Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 10, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 March 1892 — SEVEN IN THE TOILS. [ARTICLE]

SEVEN IN THE TOILS.

CHICAGO ALDERMEN INDICTED FOR BOODLING. Charge* or Conspiracy to Btlbe—Five Defendants Give Ball at Once—Official Corruption of the Most Flagrant Kind Is Exposed. Aldermanlc Kottennes*. As a sequel to the recent passage by the Chicago City Council of an ordinance granting permission to the Chicago Power Supply and Compressed Air Company to use the streets and alleys of the city in about any manner it sees fit, indictments against seven Aldermen were returned by the Grand Jury in Judge Clifford’s Court Tuesday, the charge in each case being conspiracy to commit the felony of bribery. The city fathers who must stand trial are: William J. O’Brieo, Sixth Ward. Daniel R. O’Brien, Twenty-third Ward. Nicholas A. Cremer, First Ward. Patrick J. Gorman. Thirty-third Ward. Philip Jackson, Fourteenth Ward. Stephen M. Gosselln. Seventeenth Ward. John F. Dorman. Tenth Ward. Capiases were immediately issued by Judge Clifford for the arrest of the alleged conspirators, and five of them were gathered in and promptly gave bail in the sum of SIO,OOO each for their appearance when wanted. The two delinquents were Aldermen Gosselin and Gorman. When court adjourned they had not been found.

Gosselin was arrested in the Council chamber at night. Bribery of the most flagrant kind is charged. Corruption and rottenness beyond the ideas of the most cynical citizen have been revealed, and facts which make a position in the Chicago Council one worth hundreds of dollars of preliminary expenditure in dominations will be disclosed. Evidence has been presented to the Grand Jury shovfong beyond the peradventure of a doubt that certain Aldermen have been paid liberally and in hard cash for their votes. The jury listened to a tale of rottenness and corruption to which the “boodling” of the County Commissioners and the Tweed ring was nothing. The evidence has been for some time in preparation and a mesh now inedo-res some of the “city fathers” from which there is little hope of escape. This evidence includes confessions of several guilty parties; it includes not only the promises made to them by corporations, but the letters inclosing the money to purchase their votes and ihe very greenbacks themselves with which those votes were purchased. The men who have been active in working up these cases have spared no expense and have made sure of each step. They have witnesses who have seen large sums of money paid by the representatives of corporations to individual Aldermen and who have heard the Aldermen promise, on receiving the money, to cast their votes on a certain measure in a certain.way. The money was paid in various ways. Some received it at their homes from messengers. Several were paid in the precincts of the City Hall, and it is said that two sold their votes in the lobby of the Council chamber. When the Northern Pacific ordinance was passed and when the active support of the Economic gas pipe pioposition was made by prominent members of the Council suspicion was .created, and when in one instance at least this suspicion grew to positive certa'nty of corruption the investigation was set on foot, which is now said will end only when several present members of the Chicago City Council are wearing the stripes of the Joliet penitentiary. State’s Attorney Longenecker says he expects to show that all three of the ordinances—the compressed air, the Northern Pacific, and the Economic gas—were passed by virtue of the purchase of votes for cash. “I don’t mind saying,” said he, “that there will be the biggest upheaval ever seen in this city. W hen all the facts are finally made public the result will be the most sensational of any in_ the city’s history.” He added that he Will be aided by three of the city’s most prominent attorneys, they being in the employ of three local employers who had had men assisting to make out the case against the boodlers. Gen. Lieb, the grand jury’s foreman, says, speaking on the subject: “We have the rascals where the hair is short. We have a complete chain of evidence forged around the boodlers, and if they don’t tell the truth they will not leave the Criminal Court building. By that I mean that we know tho whole truth, and all who do not tell it will be immediately arrested for perjury as well as boodling."