The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1892-11-12

wretched as the managers would have
us believe. The tendency of the cam
paign manipulation is to overestimate the
value of money in these struggles. He
sits where all the sel6shness of the party
with which his party is permeated, all
the greed of mankind, all the corrup-
zion and moral weakness, are reflected
as in mirror. Campaign managers all
agree that service through one of these
presidential struggles in enough to cause
one to lose faith in human nature. But
it must be remembered that the voters
whose susceptibility to improper influ-
ences thus passes in review before the
campaign managers number no more
than / per cent. Of thu great body OF
electors whose suffrages decide the cleo
ton. Not more than one man in hun
dred-indeed do not think the ratio is
as great as this-is to be influenced by
money OF any other improper considera-
ton. In close states and in stubbornly
contested national conflicts the purchas-
able vote undoubtedly holds the balance
of power.
And the lesson of this campaign and
of every campaign is that the American
people must raise aloft the standard OF
purity in the suffrage and so on in the
work of perfecting their ballot laws till
corruption of men becomes well nigh
impossible. The ballot law that will do
this has not yet been devised, and am
afraid never will be. The ingenious
politicians have found ways of evading
every provision against their practices
so far put upon the statute books. IT
they dare not hire a man to vote GER
tain ticket they hire him to stay away
from the polls altogether. They have
an errand for him which will take him
away from his voting precinct the night
before election and not permit him to
come back till after the polls are closed.
There is only one way to suppress all
these various forms of corruption, and
that is to educate the people, improve
their moral sense, till submission to I'M
worthy influences in connection with the
right of suffrage becomes as disgraceful
as stealing or arson. It would also be
good idea for right thinking voters to
frown upon any party which seeks to-
control the election by such means.
Right here arises the question what
voter is to do when both of the leading
parties are guilty, for, so far as [ am
able to see, they are equally guilty. AS
long as one party raises a large corrup-
ton fund and seeks to win the day by
its use the other party must do the same
thing or go down in defeat. That is pre-
cisely what happened in this campaign.
I say it upon positive glformation that
both national committees raised larger
sums for use in the campaign just ended
than any Of their predecessors had ever
done. The Republican national commit
tee handled all told more than$2, 100000
and the Democratic committee about 81,
100000.
Not all of these vast sums were spent
in improper ways. Perhaps not more
than one third Of the whole was devoted
to purposes which might fairly be called
corrupt, and of this one-third probably
not more than 40 or so per cent ever
found it's way to the voters for whom
it was intended. Campaign money al
ways gets lost on the way. 1t is distrib-
uted HONESTLY enough perhaps by the
national and state committees, but after
it leaves their hands the absorbing proc
ess begins to work. Small politicians
take out what is jokingly called ''their
commission" but for which the good,
smart English word is stealing. In this
way it is as often the politician as the
voter who is corrupted by the campaign
money.
The Democratic national committee
did not have quite as much money as
their rivals, but they had all they want
ed, For the first time in the history of
national campaigns the Democratic man
ayers had enough money to satisfy all
claims made upon them. They did not
| receive single call to which they failed
to respond. Take, for instance, the case
of Illinois. There the Democrats were
unusually aggressive and ambitious
early in the campaign. They wanted
western headquarters established, and
promised if given direct management OF
their own campaign in this way to raise
all the funds with which to carry on the
work. But they failed to keep their
promise. Though in other respects they
| did good work, their finance committee
failed to raise funds in sufficient
amounts, and during the last week OF
the campaign the Illinois national COM
mitteeman came to New York for money.
| Don Dickinson and Mr.. Whitney sal
| lied out and raised a purse of good
many thousand dollars for the Demo
| Gratis of Illinois, This was done in the
case of good many other states. Of
all the money contributed to the Demo
cratic campaign fund more than 30 per
cent. of it was raised in New York city.
| It came from merchants, importers,
bankers, capitalists. Probably Mr.. Whit
ney himself put up more than quarter
| of million dollars of it. The Republic
ans got most of their money from Penn
sylvania. Philadelphia and Pittsburg
were veritab1e gold mines for the Re-
publican campaign collectors. New
England did pretty well by the Repub-
| licans too.
The politicians say that politics is
purely a business matter. Their theory