CHARGE OF BRIBERY.

Evening Post, Volume LXXXI, Issue 75, 31 March 1910, Page 7

CHARGE OF BRIBERY.

THE CASE OF SENATOR Afi^DS. By Xelegraph.--Pre«B Association.— Copyrlgiit. NEW YORK, 30th March. The Senate of New York State, by 40 votes to 9, found that Senator Jotham P. Allds acepted a bribe of 1000 dollars (£200) to suppress legislation. Allds, earlier in ths day, had resigned his Senatorship. Senator Cobb introduced a resolution demanding a formal charge against Senator Conger of bribing Allds. The curtain at? Albany, behind which ha 6 long been performed the swiftest manoeuvring of the "Black Horse Cavalry," has (says the New York Post) been drawn up long enough to reveal an astonihhing story of bribe-taking, involving Jotham P. Allds, the newly-elected Leader of the Republican Party in the State Senate, chosen to succeed the late John Raines The agcuser is Senator Benn Conger, perhaps the most prominent business man in Tompkins County, also a Republican Senator; and a party and organisation associate of the man he accuses. Senator Conger declares that when 'he and Allds were both Assemblymen, some few year& ago, Allds took money in consideration of his aid in preventing the passage of a Bill amending the highway law, which Conger and his associates knew would severely injure the bridge business in which they were engaged, an opinion in which they were not mistaken, as has appeared since the Bill became a law. It was a "hold up Bill, Conger asserts, intended to injure a legitimate business, and he and his associates "gave up" like many other able business men to protect themselves, their employees, and their interests For some years this worked ; then in 1905 the Bill passed and became a law. What makes all this revelation the- more astounding is that Senator Conger is no "silk-stockinged reformer," nor an antiorganisation Republican. He had never before been known as a "kicker" ' or bolter, until the question of Allds"s leadership came up, after John Raines's death. Conger has beeii a practical machine-made legislator, voting straight last year against Governor Hughes' s proposed reforms. He has nursed his wrath quietly until now : perhaps if Allds had not been put forward as Senate Leader, the charge might never have come out. That was more than Senator Conger could stand, as the charge he now makes shows. Perhaps never before has so specific a charge" of personal corruption been made against a man in as high a political position in New York Slate as is Senator Allds. At the time of the nUeged corruption Allds was floor leader of the Assembly and chairman of its Ways and Moans Committee.