Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 41, Number 94, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 August 1909 — PUNISHMENT BY EXPOSURE. [ARTICLE]

PUNISHMENT BY EXPOSURE.

Former Governor Joseph W. Folk, of Missouri, in a recent lecture in Pittsburg referring to dishonesty in public places and particularly to recent exposures of corrupt Pittsburg councilmen, said: “Exposure is the real remedy for civic evil. If the punishment for bribery and graft were a question between a prison penalty and no exposure, if this were possible, or exposure and no prison penalty, I would choose exposure as the most effective for civic corruption. “It is the history of such investigations as that now holding the attention of Pittsburg, that no man worth SIOO,OOO has been sent to the penitentiary for graft or bribery, no matter how strong the evidence against him. The criminal law of this country is like a spider web that ensnares the little grafter and leaves a loophole for the wealthy man to escape, but in the end there is really no protection for the big man, although he escapes the prison penalty. “Public exposure of the wealthy grafter is his death warrant. I mean this literally. It not only blasts his reputation among men, but the history of such investigations is that exposure means the actual physical death of prominent men within two years after their guilt is established. They cannot stand the Strain following public exposure, and they either kill themselves or their health becomes so undermined that death comes quickly.”