The War on Graft

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · May 30, 1907

In a recent issue of the Woman's National Daily appears a striking editorial entitled “The War on Graft.” The crookedness therein set forth has become so open and flagrant that none can deny the seriousness of the situation. Nevertheless, as it is fashionable to be optimistic, the multitude professes to believe that somehow this old world will yet be cleaned up by the better element in the human race asserting itself. Concerning these conditions the Daily says:—

News of current events from many directions indicates that the war on graft is going merrily on. In spite of the “sweep of the reform wave” through the country, and the good work that has been done in some of the large cities, the evil breaks out afresh in some new locality with almost disheartening regularity, until it has come to look as though the war must be a sort of continuous performance. There were startling revelations in St. Louis, in New York, in Pittsburg, in Philadelphia, and in a number of other cities, two or three years ago, and there were prosecutions that landed some local statesmen, usually of small caliber, behind the bars. A great deal was printed, and there was much talking on the hustings of the moral regeneration that was coming in public affairs, and especially in municipal government. Some people were sanguine enough to think that regeneration had already been started, and the grafter would be soon driven from the land. From the news of the day, however, it would seem that the locking up or the driving out of one grafter had simply made room for another. In Kansas City, Mo., the Board of Police Commissioners have just begun the investigation of charges of graft against the police force, which, if sustained even in part, will cause the things that have been revealed in some other cities to pale into insignificance. So serious and so sweeping are these charges, that Gov. Joseph W. Polk, the man who as circuit attorney in St. Louis, made himself such a terror to corrupt public servants, has announced that he will go there and in person take part in the investigation.

At the same time the grand jury at Chicago, in a special report, indict four members of the police force, and recommend that their successors take up the work where the time limit compelled them to let go of it, and push the probe with vigor. That there is general crook-