The Irish standard., 1905-10-07


soft-voiced young man.
Il am District Attorney Folk" said
the visitor. Il have evidence that you
have Doodle fund of seventy thou
sand dollars in your vault, deposited
by Mr.. So-andSo. 1 can give you the
number of the box, and l want you to
open your vault and let me see
whether or not l have been m:sin-
formed"
! OF course the banker refused, not
knowing that young Stonewall Jack
son of politics stood before him. In a
few minutes he was made to see his
mistake. The vault was opened. The
box was withdrawn. There lay the
seventy thousand dollars
| Folk went to another bank and re-
peated the same operation. Then he
made arrests righs and left. Convic-
tions followed. banker got five
years, millionaire broker go, three
and the boss himself was sentenced
to three years in stripes. One of the
gang leaders has since been a resident
of Mexico. The marvellous machine
was left "a thing of shreds and tat
ters." Afterward, these decisions were
reversed by the State Supreme Court,
but the prestige of the gang was gone.
| AT first st. Louis gave Folk a timid
support, but later the people rallied
! around him in thousands. Buttons
We're struck off bearing the war-cry,
Folk and Reform" A group Of ad-
mirers presented him with a house,
but, perhaps with memories of Admiral
Dewey's sad experience he refused the
+, gift. Finally, in spite of a Roosevelt
landslide for the other ticket, they
| made him governor of Missouri.
Folk is no Socialist. He has no
dream of a new social system. The
ories of good government are no more
| to him than theories of cleanliness are
to broom. His mind, which works
with the mechanical precision of
cash register, has one predominant
| bent - to enforce the law. AS to
whether this or that statute ought to
be enforced he has no opinion. 1t is
| the law, and that is enough. This
principle makes trouble, obstructs
business, and gives the "jail night
mare" to dozens of respectable citi-
zens. AS the Germans say, it some-
times throws out the child with
| the bath,' but it is the way of
the reformer, and two-thirds of
| Missouri have voted that they are
| willing to have the merry game go on.
! The reformers who are, as we might
say, in active eruption at the present
| time, are Weaver, of Philadelphia;
Jerome, of New York; Folk, of Mis-
souri,; La Toilette, of Wisconsin;
Johnson, of Cleveland; Hitchcock, head
of the Interior Department; Hoch of
Kansas, and Dunno, of Chicago. Bris-
tow, late Of the Postoftice Department,
and Garvin, formerly governor of
| Rhode Island, seem to have subsided
| temporarily. Some are Republican
| majority are Democrats. Johnson is
a millionaire; La Toilette is poor; the
others are scattered up and down the
temperate zone of success. Weaver
and Folk were political accidents; the
rest were known to be reformers be.
| fore election. Weaver Dunno, Folk.
Hitchcock and Bristow are quiet and
| business-like in their methods; john
son, Hoch, Jerome and La Toilette are
more Or less sensational.
And so the war; whoop of the re-
former is heard in the land to such
an extent that Europe has heard it
and is propounding all manner of rea.
sons. wise and otherwise, for "Ameri
can corruption" AS matter of fac
we are not corrupt people. We are
the greatest readers of newspapers and
ma agaznes and the greatest believers
in publicity. Every little wrong-do-
ing is shouted from the housetops,
especially if any public official is con-
cerned We are eighty millions Of
people. We elect three hundred thou
sand public officials. We spend fifteen
hundred millions of dollars on our pub
lie affairs in one year. If this vast
amount of business were to be trans
acted without cry of corruption here
and there, it would be an achievement
that has never yet been accomplished
in the history Of the world.
There is no comparison between the
| occasional pickings and stealings of
our office holders and the almost uni
versal corruption of Russia, where it
| proverbially costs ruble to pay a
| kopeck. Now and then we find spots
on the robe of one Of our judges, but
| in Turkey. says a recent book of travel,
"any judge can be influenced by the
gift Of twenty-five cents" Our recent
insurance disclosures are bad enough,
but no worse than the Whitaker
Wright scandal, which tarnished some
proud names in Great Britain. Many
an expose in Europe has proved that
the United States has no monopoly of
unfit public officials. The word graft"
is new, but the fact is as old as the