The courier., 1902-03-08
HE COURIER

schemes will eventually be futile. Ex
posure and defeat is the final portion
of all such men as Croker. He was tn
shrewdest politician and most accom-
plished engineer in this country ant
a protracted term OF power made hin
feel secure. But he was defeated ant
has retired to live out the balance o.
his days on his in-gotten capital.
is not likely then that there are any
small-bore politicians in Lincoln abb,
to defeat the tendencies Of evolution
actively at work in American politics
President Roosevelt prescribes pub
licity for the evils incident to trusts
Publicity is the one disinfectant that
the corrupt politician breads above al
others. Councilman Bacon did no,
squirm until the newspapers printed
his o. X. of his sons bill to the city
of seventy-five dollars for ten days
clerical work. AS Mark Twain says
the wickedness is being found out. The
municipal function performed by the
papers is rarely recognized and never
rewarded by anything but the ac-
complishment of the general good.
In the patient, never omitted, daily
service performed by the city papers,
whose effects are illustrated by the
primaries held last week, the people
have an example of the value of pub
licity applied to city administration.
OF course the publicity is Intellectual
unless it appeals to the conscience and
the bipartisan reasoning of a great
people The seventy-twO votes re-
ceived by Councilman Bacon in the
Fourth ward should be warning to
all future councilmen who contemplate
a raid on the city for the benefit of
their families, of the certainty Of dis
covery, punishment and disgrace. For
a man cannot be disgraced, no matter
how fragrant the offense he has COM
mitted, until it has been made public.
Disgrace follows upon the announce
ment of a crime and is not inherent in
it's commission. This is where the
newspapers come in. Fear of publicity
restrains many a greedy councilman
or other city official, who is without
self-respect, whose inner light has been
so long put out that his vision is ad-
justed to darkness, but who, never
theless, has an intellectual conception
of the effect of light upon other people
and of its reflex effect upon himself.
The function of reporting the dia-
bolical schemes of corrupt officials is
not an agreeable one. 1t is much more
low-men and their wives and daugh-
tiers to be able to maintain the social
fiction that the head of the house is
impeccable, an upright citizen and all
that the head of the house should be.
The editors who deliberately repudiate
the fiction and prove that their neigh
Dor is highway robber can not ex-
pect to be invited to any more ken
singtons in the neighbOrhOod. In de-
Gliding to expose the Vaccinations of
their neighbors they renounce the le-
gitimate desire to be invited to pour
or to dip" at receptions. They fl
nally renounce these social decorations
and distinctions when they put on the
editorial veil. The ceremony should
be accompanied by the dramatic re-
nunciations adopted by the Catholic
church on the admission Of sisters to
conventual life. For the embarrass-
ments Of an editor who tries conscien-
tiously to perform the duties of his
position are many and real. As to
rewards, there are none this side the
Judgment. That is one reason why 1t