The record-union., 1892-01-23


Grafton that United States Senator is to
be elected, and that in California United
States Senators are not elected without
the use OF money, either in the way of Sc
curing members of the Legislature who
will choose the man whose money was
used, or in the way of corrupting mem
bers of the Legislature to vote for the
candidate willing to use these corrupt in
| f1uences. The candidate for United States
! Senator will not be seen. 1t will be his
money only that will be felt. Political
manipulators will ask candidates with
reference to their votes on United States
Senator: with reference to their usable-
ness as to "cinch'' measures; with refer
ence to the establishment of branch in
sane asylums, branch prisons, and branch
reformatories in absurd places; with ref
erence to the division of counties where
there is money in it; with reference to the
unreasonable restraint of trade in the
way of regulating corporate property;
and when these measures are introduced,
the bosses-the movers of the measures
will, we fear, find in the Bulletin much
encouragement of thoughtless denuncia-
ton of corporations. denunciation in
dulged in solely for the sake of a cheap
popularity with unthinking people.
| These bosses, we affirm, however, will
open political business this year, and
will undertake to deliver any quantity of
| legislation or the bestowal of any Sena-
torial favors on the people who desire to
buy legislation, or buy immunity from
it, or persons who desire to be United
| States Senator, or who wish to defeat
| other persons for that high office. This
will go on in the city of San Francisco
without concealment. VIII the Bulletin
and our other journalistic contemporaries
! in San Francisco expose these methods?
| VIII the mythical leading citizen of San
| Francisco care straw whether Senatorial
honors are bought or sold? VIII the
merchant of San Francisco leave his
ledger to attend primary meeting or
be delegate in any convention? VIII
the banker forget the estimates of per-
centages which in his mind form the
great desideratum of this world and even
the world to come to attend primary"
meeting or be delegate to a convention?
When the firm of political bosses who
have unblushingly opened an Office for
the undisguised purpose of corrupting the
fountains of government secure the
twenty-one Assemblymen and six Sena-
tors, thus obtaining balance of power in
all legislative matters and squandering
the peoples money, who will be to blame,
or who viii have the right to complain?
| These political methods will be adopted
in fact, are being adopted-in the City
of San Francisco to-day. The rural
counties Of the State can be depended
upon, as heretofore, to send respectable,
decent, moderately respectable and semi
decent persons, and other classes from
fair to middling, to make laws for them;
|
the future may be judged, San Francisco
will not do so. And for the sake of the
perspicuity it will add, we beg leave
to make this directly personal by
asking when the methods by which
corrupt men are elected to the
Legislature for the purpose of cor
ruption, when the political machine is
set in motion for the purpose of securing
men who make politics a trade-political
power to the injury of the common
wealth-we say when these things are pro-
ceeding and being done openly, will
the Bulletin, the Call, the Chronicle, the
Examiner and the Post take the pains or
the trouble to expose the methods
"name the shame by it's nameless
name?" And if they do this, will the
commercial, manufacturing and indus
trial elements of the metropolis arouse
themselves sufficiently to defeat the pur-
poses Of the Bedouins and thwart the de-
spoilers of legislative honor? We are
afraid not.
We are justified in this conclusion by
recent events in that city. Doodle begins
with the primary" establishing the
supremacy of the Boss, and the Boss is
permitted to exist by the sufferance of the
better element, as it is pleased to term it
self, Of community life. When Judge
Wallace packed Grand jury for the
ostensible purpose of purifying politics,
he struck at remote effect, not central
cause. With the machinery of the election
in the hands of the corruptors of men,
and with an elective Judiciary, the
bosses will see to it that there are no
more Judge Wallaces, with their packed
Grand Juries. The packed Grand Jury
experiment simply taught the bosses
where the fences had been left down.
Reform is not to come in that direction.
It is to come by the assertion on the part
of the real sovereignty of its right to gov
ern, and government begins under our
political system with the primaries"
with the convention, with party organi-
cation. And so long as these things are
in the control of men who make politics
trade, Legislatures, courts and all man
ifestations of government will respond to
their venal demand.
| ---------
McKenna Held for Trial.
David McKenna, the individual in whose
| ,,aar tho Apoarican piuay