THE BOSS IN POLITICS by T.

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Oct 20, 1898

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 24, No. 42.

THE BOSS IN POLITICS.

By T.

It is no secret that there are numerous “bosses” in politics. Each ward and local precinct has its little “boss,” who looks after the details of all political business in his locality. The city has a big “boss,” who caters to all the little “bosses” and seeks to hold the reins of politics in his locality. Then there are more influential “bosses” in each State, and still greater ones in the nation at large.

These “bosses” do everything in their power to get their political friends elected, and they are not at all particular about the means they employ. When fair and honest methods happen to seem the best, they do not object to using them, but the usual plan is to resort to the worst kinds of frauds, bribes, and trickery. The object is to win. The means to be employed, provided they can keep from being found out, is not a matter to trouble their consciences.

When the “bosses” get their men in office, then begins the “dividing up of the spoils.” Positions are given to those who have been true to the political machine. New offices are created, and in every way imaginable the public is despoiled by the politicians.

The foregoing are facts that are freely admitted by every one. We hear it stated on every hand that the political corruption in our large cities is of the very darkest and worst type. And, furthermore, that what exists in the States and nation at large can not be said to be much better.

Papers and magazines speak out against it. The platform and the pulpit denounce it. Still, the evil work goes on, getting worse and worse. It seems impossible to make an impression upon it or even to retard the flood of corruption that is deluging every nook and corner of the whole nation. And we need not confine it to this nation, either, for the rest of the world is as bad, and some places much worse.

Did it ever occur to you that the money power of the world is back of much of this political corruption? The money power desires to have men in city offices that for a suitable bribe will grant them franchises and special privileges, so that they can go on unhindered in their heaping together of the earth’s treasures. They also want men in State Legislatures and in the national Congress that they can manipulate for their personal ends.

And while wealthy men will stoop to such methods of corruption, they will readily find those who are willing to be corrupted. And once the unclean fountain is opened up, it spreads its polluting stream with amazing rapidity. The politicians find out that the moneyed men will use bribes, and they take particular pains to exact these bribes in just as large quantities and just as frequently as possible.

Wealth when rightly used is one of the greatest blessings. It represents that which will buy our temporal necessities and comforts. But when the great mass of wealth is concentrated in the hands of a few men, and these men use its immense power to corrupt town and city councils, State and national Legislatures, and anything else that comes in their way, there is no describing the evil that follows.

The old Roman Empire fell because a few men got hold of her wealth and through that wealth made her so rotten that she simply broke in pieces. The hand of monopoly and concentrated and congested wealth had more to do than, perhaps, any one other thing in producing the Revolution and Reign of Terror that raged in France a hundred years ago.

But now we see the whole world under this blighting evil. What must be the awful fruit that will soon have to be reaped! The indications are strong and clear that we are standing in the very presence of that awful time spoken of by the prophet Daniel: “And there shall be a time of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation even to that same time.”

We should look facts squarely in the face, and be ready for the issue. T.