A Startling Exposure by L. A. S.

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Feb 17, 1903

A Startling Exposure

By L. A. S.

“HOLDING UP A STATE” is the title of an article in The Outlook of February 7, in which George Kennan, the well-known traveler and writer, describes his personal investigations into the political methods which have for so long a time maintained a senatorial deadlock in the State of Delaware. For thirteen years this State, owing to the “rule-or-ruin” policy of a party which sought to create a one-man power, has had only one senator in Congress, and for two years past it has not been represented in the Senate at all. The facts which Mr. Kennan discovered are such as have long been believed to exist in many parts of the country, on the basis of evidence of a more or less tangible nature; but never before has the full proof of anything so completely exemplifying the term “political corruption” been brought into the public view, save in the revelations of municipal misrule that have recently cast the shadow of disgrace over some of the larger cities. Never before has an entire State been “held up” with such boldness and for such a period of time. Evidently we have reached a day when political corruption is far bolder, if not far greater, than in the times which have passed into history.

The story of this bold “hold-up” of the State of Delaware is the story of the efforts of J. Edward Addicks, of that State, to purchase a seat in the United States Senate. He is a wealthy man, and it is estimated that he has spent, in

all, more than a million dollars in the purchase of votes. The condition of things which has grown up in Delaware under the campaigns of corruption led by Mr. Addicks is thus described by Mr. Kennan:—

Women urge their husbands to sell their votes because they need the money, and because the act is no longer regarded as disgraceful; eight-year-old boys wish that they were grown up, so that they might get twenty dollars from Addicks; farmers sell not only their own votes, but the votes of their sons who have just come of age; Democrats go into the camp of the Addicks Republicans simply because the latter have “got the most money;” and intelligent young men frankly express the opinion that the bringing in and distribution of a huge corruption fund is a good thing for the poor farmers, and that a man who buys votes enough to elect him to the Senate of the United States is fully entitled to go there, and is unjustly treated, if not actually defrauded, when kept out of the position for which he has liberally paid.

“The buying of votes throughout southern Delaware in last fall’s election,” says Mr. Kennan, “was so open and so notorious that the local Addicks men did not think it worth while to make a secret of it.” Considering the readiness of the people to sell their votes, there was indeed no apparent necessity for secrecy. For example, it is mentioned that “there are said to be less than fifty unpurchasable votes in the whole of Dagsboro.” In Kent and Sussex Counties, where it is reported that $130,000 was spent to purchase votes in 1902, seven or eight thousand voters were willing to sell their votes. This is a very large proportion of the total voting population.

The “hold-up” of the State still continues, and seemingly with the indorsement of almost the highest authority in the Republican national party; for Mr. Kennan adds that “Senator Hanna, chairman of the National Republican committee, telegraphs State Representative Flinn at Dover that the anti-Addicks men ought not to combine with the Democrats to defeat the union Republicans, because ‘certainly the party is entitled to the fruits of its’ (purchased) ‘victory.’”

What politics is in Delaware, as revealed by these facts, it is in every State, to a greater or less extent. The “corruption fund” is a common thing on election days, and the election returns are largely influenced, and in many cases actually determined, by purchased votes. No proof of this assertion is needed beyond the knowledge which must have been gained by every intelligent observer of political affairs.

It is the constant endeavor of a large class of reformers in this country to purify politics by turning out the “rascals” who have bought their way into office. These reformers build up beautiful theories and paint beautiful pictures of the good time that is coming when politics shall have been made pure by law, or by some other earthly means. The very kingdom of heaven is, we are told, to be set up on the earth by the churches getting control of State and national politics. But these reformers do not look deep enough to see that the root of the whole difficulty is in the people themselves. There would be no corrupt use of money on election day if the people were not ready to sell their votes; and the selling of their votes is not the means of their corruption, but the evidence of it. The hold-ups of States and cities by men who have wealth without conscience, is the fruit upon the evil tree; and though the fruit may be plucked off by legal or political means, the tree will surely bear another and similar crop. Politics or the law may remove the figureheads to which public attention is turned by exposures like this made by Mr. Kennan, but Christianity alone can purify the individual heart in which lies the evil that makes political corruption possible. And this, and only this, is the proper work of the Christian church.

L. A. S.