A SATURNALIA OF CORRUPTION.

Evening Post, Volume LXXIX, Issue 112, 13 May 1910, Page 6

A SATURNALIA OF CORRUPTION.

A lurid light is thrown upon the spread of political corruption in the '•United States by our American corres/pondent in the letter which we pußUsh Vto-day. When a United States Senator "resigns his seat half an hour before the Senate was to vote upon the charge which had been brought against him of 'taking a bribe from a bridge company "to vote against a Bill inimical to its interests, the agency which controls our t cable service deems it worth reporting. 'Some of the more striking facts in the saturnalia of corruption which has recently been exposed in Pittsburg have also found ■ their way along the cables. But these casual items give but a very faint idea either of the appalling extent of the evil or of the progress of the measures which are being taken to check it. The matter is placed in something like its true perspective in the letter to which we have referred. Our correspondent does, indeed, suggest one reason why no practicable cable service could be expected to deal at all adequately with the 'matter, for he points out that to keep paca with the ugly business involves quite a severe task even for the daily press of tho United States. The news of political corruption occupies, he say.% the best part of a page in nearly every issue of an American newspaper, and it reached such enormous dimensions in a recent issue of the New York World that a special summary was published at the same time for the benefit of those readers who might despair of the attempt to wade through the whole mass, The principal item* in this sum-

I maryi of the-procee«tings- of a > single dayare given- by onr correspondent, and lmake very painful reading. They include ca«es in N«w York, Mississippi, 'Ohio, and Pittsburg, and cases were also pending in San Francisco, Philadelphia, Chicago, and about a score of smaller cities. The details of the Pittsburg revelations will 'be found particularly interesting. Prosecutions for bribery had, it seems, been proceeding in the leisurely American style for nearly two years when the confession of a member of the- Pittsburg City Council suddenly quickened the pace and startled the -whole country. Steel manufacturers and bankers, the millionaire leaders of commerce and society, became involved in the charges; one at least of them has confessed, and others are likely to find their way to gaol. The promise of immunity to those councilmen who acknowledged their guilt resulted in the court being rushed by forty eager penitents in a single day. For the privilege- of getting the deposit of the city funds, three banks had combined to pay the members of the council the nice little sum of £20,400 ; and such minor | •matters as contracts, licenses, and the 'Test had been systematically farmed in the same way. It is a wonderful and almost incredible story, even as summarised by our correspondent. Yet the .melancholy picture which he paints "b tfnot entirely without ' hope. The darkest 'tour is that which precedes the dawn. Political corruption is probably more widespread in the United States than it was ten or twenty years ago, but the •main reason why it seems so much" worse is that much more attention is being .focoeeed upon it by the reformers than ■was previously the case. It is impossible »to suppose that the strenuous pro-S-pagaiHia of the Good Government clubs aaid similar institutions, aided by the which are being made day by day, in the courts, the Legislatures, and 'the- newspapers, will not in due course, their' effect. Even the most .■confirmed dollar-chaser will be convinced Tn thne'that it will actually pay him better to have good representatives who will govern honestly, than to have corrupt ones who must be continually bribed. At a later stage he may even be induced to spare some time from the feverish accumulation of wealth for the -work of framing and administering the laws under which he lives. "Misgovernment in the United States," says an American reformer, "is an incident .in the history of commerce." New Zealand will follow the same path if its best ,men are to devote all their energies to the race for riches, and apasry — the parent of corruption — is to become the rule in public affairs.