St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1894-02-16
ONE BOSS JAILED.

John 7. McKane, superintendent of
the Gravesend Sunday school. chief of
its police force, supervisor of the town,
manipulation Of caucuses, paddeI of reg
istration lists, general political lord pro-
prietor of his duchy, casting its votes as
his sweet will listed: Democrat who
boosted that he made Harrison presi-
dent and lied in his boast, is lying in
Jail awaiting the sentence which will
send him to Sing Sing for a period not
less than two nor more than ten years.
This man was the typical BOSS. He
has only done what other bosses have
done, and what every other one who is
imbued with the right sense OF his duty
would always do; and for doing which,
could the same deserts be melted out
each of them, every state in the Union
would make large contribution to the
prison population, and every political
party would furnish its equal share. 1t
was the better or worse fortune of Nc
Kane that he was so situated that he
could develop the blossom of bossism
into the full, ripe fruitage. He had made
himself the absolute master of bis baili-
wick. His word was law, his decree
was fate. No man dared oppose him;
all trembled before him, all slavishly
executed his will.
He had run his course so long un-
checked that he imagined himself above
those regulations which society had felt
it essential to enact for its own preser-
walton. For years he had driven his
coach and four through every statute
enacted to permit voters to express their
will and to safeguard it when ex-
pressed. He had padded the registra-
ton lists until the names on them
trebled the voting population of the
place, and then furnished the FOUNDERS
to imperSonate the names. He COM
mitted perjury right and left, with a
conviction that oaths were mere idle
formalities which a superintendent of
Sunday schools and boss might well
be Indifferent to.
But atlast Boss McKane ran against
a man and a newspaper. William J.
Gaynor was candidate in the elections
last year for Judge. He knew McKane
and his methods, aud he knew that the
boss intended to ''knock him out" He
sent his men to copy the registration
lists, and the boss's police locked them
up or drove them away. Injunctions
were issued to prevent interference
with the copyists, and the boss drove
off the men who would serve them, re-
garding the interference of the courts
with his affairs as only sheer i'm
pertinence, to be properly resented.
Then he ran against newspaper. II e
should have known better than this on
general principles. but especially should
he have learned to beware of the New
| York Times. The fate of Tweed is not
thing so long of the past that this boss
could have forgotten the little difficulty
between Tweed and the Times, as re-
suit of which Mr.. Tweed died in prison.
But he probably thought himself a
"biger man" than Tweed, and that he
could defy courts and papers where
| Tweed failed. He knows better now,
and, in the years before him while he is
doing time for the state, he will have
ample opportunity to reflect on all these
things, to get a correcter idea Of the
| limitations of the boss, the powers oil
the courts when set in motion, aud of
the uselessness of bucking against q
| newspaper when it enlists in the work
of exposing aud bringing the boss to
| punishment.
And, too, it is probable that one oil
the reflections of the ex-boss will be on