Gloucester County Democrat. (Woodbury, N.J.) 1878-1932, 1901-08-22

The Pennsylvania Democrats never did a
better days work for themselves and fol-
the State than in their late convention. In
the first place, they beat off the Quay Dem
ocrats, into whose destructive hands the
organization has fallen; then they adopted
platform declaring against local conditions
which have dragged Philadelphia and
Pennsylvania into the mire; then they Sc
lected candidates for the State offices whose
names are warrant for honesty and good
government; and lastly they appointed a
committee of five leading men to reorganize
the party in Philadelphia, that it will not
be regularly sold out at every election.
The denunciation of the State govern
ment is searching, concise and effective:
Shamelessly and openly the votes of leg
isators are bought and so persistently and
constantly that market values for legislators
have been established by settled custom.
The apparent Indifference of our people
to these outrages emboldened the corrup-
tionists to such an extent that the last
session of our legislature out-Heroded
Herod in all its infamies.
All men pronounce it the most corrupt
legislative body that ever convened in any
State of the Union. Its very organization
was founded on the purchase of yenal
Legislators with money and place, and it
closed its session with the browning infamy
of that most stupendous franchise steal,
shocking the moral sense of the entire
country. The selection of a United States
senator was accomplished in a carnival of
eruption and bribery. In the reckless
determination to punish enemies and reward
subservient tools established municipal
governments were ruthlessly overturned
and the chosen servants Of the people ex-
PEELED from their offices to make place for
the creatures of corrupt machine.
The faith of the people in the sanctity of
the judiciary was broken by it's hating
efforts to find plausible excuse for the
crime. Fooled in its efforts to rob the State
of millions of dollars of valuable coal de-
posits, the legislature proceeded to that
other and greater robbery of the railway
franchises of the State, worth millions to
the plunderers, and stripping every city,
town and township in the commonwealth
of the proper control of its streets for
trolley improvements.
Even the public charities of the State
its hospitals and asylums and the comfort
of their unfortunate inmates-were made
the sport of political greed and their appro-
priations measured and determined by their
use and services to the machine.
No possible field of corruption was left
uncultivated by the crew of public plum
derers who have seized upon our State
plunderers who, in the name of a great
political party, have prostituted all the
purposes and powers of government to their
own enrichment. For these crimes we
indict the Republican organization of
Pennsylvania as it is now controlled.
OF the participation and assistance of
unworthy Democratic legislators in these
wrongs the convention declares its strongest
denunciation. They have betrayed their
constituents, inflicting lasting, irreparable
injury on their party and proved themselves
unworthy of public confidence. We leave
to their immediate constituents the inflic-t
ton of political punishment.