The age-herald., 1901-01-14
ST. LOUIS SCORED
 BY GRAND JURY
Twenty-four Indictments Against
 Municipal Politicians
DISCUSS POLICE BRIBERY
Jurymen Throw Up Their Hands When They Come to That Portion of Report Treating on Whole
 sale Election Frauds.

St. Louis. Mo-. January 1s.-The final re- port of the Grand Jury, composed of prom inent business men, who have been inyes- tigating municipal matters, has been re- turned. Twenty-four indictments, only four of which, for minor crimes, are made public, were handed down. Among the twenty indictments Is one against an offi- cial of the House of Delegates, who is charged with attempting to bribe a States witness against men accused of highway robbery. He will be arrested Monday.
 The Post-Dispatch says of the report
 Accompanying the indictments was the report of the Grand Jury touching their investigations of police bribery and cleo tion fraud charges. together with the re- suit of their investigation of public criti- cisms of the conduct of the police depart ment. Lack of cooperation between the Board of Police Commissioners and the chief of police calls forth censure; cor ,rupt use of the police in politics drawn from instances during the past election as investigated by the-jurymen is condemned, and at meeting at the Planters Hotel preceding the last election, where it is charged that the police heads and Demo- cratic State officials discussed the instruc- tions to be given to the police in their conduct toward deputy sheriffs under a Republican administration, are stigma tized by the jury as reprehensibe.
 The jurymen throw up their hands when they come to that portion of their report treating on the many charges, spec fife and general of wholesale election frauds. They dismiss the charges as sim ply appalling by reason of their multitude and varied character.
 "So vast was the evidence of this sort of corruption that the jury expresses it. self as utterly inadequate to cope with the situation because of the limited time at their disposal.
 "A short chapter of censure is devoted to the failure of the Mayor to attend the meetings of the police board, of which he is an ex-officio member by law. The jury says that opposite political affiliations are no excuse for the persistent ,and, to them studied absence of the city's chief exec,,- tive.
 'Wineroom evils are branded as being among the worst iniquities of municipal life, and the evident failure of the police to crush this violation of good morals re- ceives a brief but sharp rebuke, and the efforts of civic influences to eradicate the sin are applauded, with the admonition that the police exert a more potent power in dealing with the issue.
 "The condition of the city's eleemosynary institutions is called wretched. What the jurymen saw during personal visits to these places is painted in the most depre- catory manner, and the kind of admins tratfon of public affairs making possible such conditions are referred to in an iron ical strain.
 'In the above connection the report says that enforced economics and over crowding are carried on to such extremes that so far as they relate to methods they have made it necessary to employ, there is an uncomfortably close relation between lack of funds and crime.''