The sun. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1833-1916, 1904-10-17
oDELLISM ON TIE CANALS.
OF GRAFT IN SEVERAL
WAYNE COUNTY TOWNS.
Odcll Machine Men Get All OF It--A Livery.
man Cleans Up s2O,O 900 In Four Years
by "WeightinE the Banks" and Haul
ing Canal Laborers TO Their Work
Pay Rolls Increased 200 Per
Cent. 10 Handle Much Less Traffic.

L inE sanaI LaDOrers 10 IHPlr WOrk
Pay Rolls Increased 400 Per
Cent. 10 Handle Much Less Trafr'c.
| NEWARK, N Y. Oct. l5.-They have
queer equivalent for the word grating
In Wayne county. They sometimes call
II -wcighting the banks" The expression
has its source in the familiarity Of SOHO Of
/ Wayne's citizens with Odell methods on
i the Erie Canal
At the outset of this account of one day Q
observation of the canal in three or four
L Wayne towns let 1t be written that the
] canal does not reek with graft The methods
OF the last four years have not been the
methods Of the sandbagger and the stranger.
So insidious and so pervasive has been the
campaign for loot and political power
that hundreds OF good people in these
towns do not know to-day all the facts
which are here set down. But pretty
nearly every one know some OF them.
There is hardly business man, be he Demo
Graf or honest Republican, who has not felt
the pressure applied in some way or an
other to give his Odell-enlisted competitor
an undue and unfair advantage.
Has he owned a livery stable? He has
seen a competitor go into business across
the way, borrow $500 to buy his first team
of horses and clean up, in four years of
Cdell regime at Albany $4,000 by the
simple mysteries of weighing the bank |"
and hauling canal laborers from their
lodging to their work
Has he run a marble yard? He has seen
his competitor go down to the banks of
the canal, openly and in broad daylight,
and take some thousands of feet of State
timber away to his shop, there to make
Use of them in rebuilding that same shop.
Is he dealer in builders supplies? He
may sit and ponder over the fact that though
he cannot sell the State or the county one
pound Of cement or one cubic foot of sand
the canal authorities under the direction
of Gen. j. Wilson Tubbs of Rochester,
can find a market, right in town, for thous-
ands of dollars worth of cement and con-
crete bridge work-in places where hun
dreds of dollars worth Of iron bridge work
would do just as well.
Is he a landowner? He may grit his
teeth while the canal repair and construc-
ton force bend all their energies to the deep
ening and widening of drain "for the
7 improvement of the canal"-and meanwhile
convert good Odell Republican neighbours
I worthless bog into firm and salable land.
to the lowering of values in all the neigh
borhood beside.
Is he merely poor devil of taxpayer?
| He may be, but does not rejoice in the en-
ployment of six lock tenders where two
were formerly sufficient to take care of
four times az much traffic and three patrol
men, to do work that would not seriously
tax one man for ten days in a month.
Folks living on the banks Of the canal
have found it interesting, if depressing
to study the adaptation of graft methods
to the reformed canal The most rabd
Roosevelt did reform the Canal. New
commentator will admit that 1900 Gov.
Workers do not remember Col John "
Partridge as the most powerful and effective
police head the city ever had. but he wa
a good engineer and made his subordi
mates live up to his engineering standards
while he was Commissioner of Public Works.
When folk along the oanalIsaw aTgrafter
bleeding the State Treasury they COM
planned to Gov. Roosevelt, who referred
the matter to Col. Partridge, and the CRATER
was bounced.
All along the canal are men who were
put there by the Roosevelt administration
They are men who stand high in the opinions
of their neighbors. They are neither
grafters nor the friends of grafters. 1t
was to these men that the advocates Of the
$lo1 100000 barge canal pointed when they
were arguing that canal could and would
be honestly administered. But their Use
fulness as exhib its is almost over. They
have proved very annoying, some Of them,
in blocking Gov. Odells political machina-
ton and graft consumption plant Those
who have made their neoks stiff at the
first suggestion of blinking wrongdoing
have already felt the urge Of the grafters
,,pIar tbair fa;l 80
is former Superintendent King Of the Mon
tezuma section. Mr.. King is still loyal
Republican and thinks he can settle his
troubles inside the party" but his neigh
bors say that he was fired out of his job by
odell for refusing to appoint Jail birds.
drunkards and bribers to do canal work
the services of these same bribers, drunk
ards and Jail birds being desired by Mr..
Odell in the primary fights last fall
One Of the leftover exhibits OF the Roose-
welt Administration Is Mr.. Henry Nichooy,
superintendent of Section Of the Western
Division, which includes, among other vii
lagos. Clyde. Lyons and Newark, in Wayne
county. Mr. Nicholoy's neighbors are 80
sure Of him that they want to fight when
questions are asked about him.
Hank Nicholoy,' said one OF them, with
some violence, on Tuesday, lis as honest
as gold dollar He couldn't be forced to
do thing that seemed to him dishonest
It's a wonder to me how he has stayed in
Office four years under Odell. Because
Ncholoy isn't after a cent in the world
that he hasn't earned, though he will take
orders from higher authority"
Therefore, let it be thoroughly under
stood by the students of the petty larceny,
trivial, spiteful bank-weighting graft of
Wayne that Henry Nicholoy has not profited
by any of them one cent. The worst that
can be said of him is that he has held his
job instead Of being fired for aggressive |
honesty as King was fired.
Now, as to bank weighing" The |
process has been known as long as canals
have been dug. Sometimes a canal bank
softens. perhaps as the result of the boring
into it of rhuskrats. and begins to bulge
and slip out. 1t has been the custom to