THE THEORY AND THE CONDITION.
By Editor
JOSEPH W. FOLK, of Missouri, achieved the notoriety that made him governor of the state through the hunt for boodlers and grafters which he instituted in the state Legislature. The fact that Mr. Folk received sufficient support from the people to elect him to the highest office in the state has caused him to conclude that the forces of evil are being speedily vanquished, and that an era of peace and righteousness is now being ushered in. He attributes the recent revelations of corruption in state and municipal affairs to an awakening public conscience rather than to an increase of corruption among those in positions where money can be made with ease, by corrupt practises. In a signed interview, among other things, Mr. Folk says: "Up to three years ago there had been only thirty-four cases of bribery reported in the preceding hundred years of our country's history. This was not because the offense was uncommon, but for the reason that it was unusual for any one to be prosecuted for what was then termed a conventional crime. Men gave bribes and thought nothing of it. Men took bribes and boasted of the fact. Legislative halls became dens of thieves. The touch of the unclean dollar was over all, and the public conscience was asleep. "Then came the revelations in St. Louis, followed by Minneapolis and other cities, and the people awoke to how they were being plundered by their trusted officials and to the fact that bribery, if allowed to go on unchecked, would mean government not of the people, but of the few with wealth enough to purchase official favors. From city to city and state to state the idea went until now many states and cities are waging war against the things that dishonor. "This condition should encourage all lovers of good government, for the remedy for corruption in its last analysis lies in the hearts of the people." We have passed through the commercial age, when the chief end and aim were to acquire wealth; we are entering now into the age of high ideals. The question is now, not how to get rich, but how to get right. The rule of the dollar is not as potent as it was, and the reign of law is becoming more accepted. We are passing from evil to good, and from darkness into light. Even the casual reader will hesitate to believe that this roseate view of the present is the true one in view of the daily revelations of corrupt conditions, municipal, state, and national. It is a fact that the very opulent, gorged, overflowing condition of public corruption has forced itself upon the attention of the people. It has been impossible to keep the lid on securely enough to hide it from public view. The public are being tardily awakened by what is coming to light, and a few of the many conspirators of fraud are being punished; but that coming to light is due much more to the very uncontrolled prevalence of the evil than to any public awakening. The people of Philadelphia were aroused and angered by the proposed public steal of valuable franchises by their own municipal officers; but there has been much less accomplished in the way of blocking the plans of the spoilers than a really awakened public conscience would demand. A few men have been removed from their official positions, but no boodler has felt the heavy hand of the law. Even the notoriously crooked mayor of Minneapolis, after a long trial, exhausting legal technicalities, is free. The boodling body of the Missouri Legislature has been scarcely rippled by any legal retribution at all commensurate with the offensive acts performed. The last paragraph in the quotation above could hardly be farther from a true statement of the conditions that exist. If the world or this nation or any state or city has passed out of the commercial age into the age of high ideals, it is certain that no change has occurred that would indicate the transition. The lust for gold grows with each new hoarded dollar; the lust for control grows with each new industry monopolized; and the god of wealth has more votaries bending before its altar than bow in true, undivided worship at the altar of their Maker. Never were dollars piled on dollars as now; never were men selling souls for "spot cash" as they are to-day, while the victims of their greed are toiling, half-clad and half-fed, in cellar and attic for a miserly stipend that will not keep flesh upon their bones or clothes upon their backs. Some—many—have passed out of the age of commercialism—out of the age of high ideals, too, for that matter—they have been ground through the mills of greed. They are not now in the age of commercialism—they are in their graves, and their numbers are growing. There are some who have never participated in the mammon worship that has made this the age of commercialism—they are few. There are men, eminent men, who see the situation as it is. Listen to the words of Mr. James B. Dill, recently a prominent corporation attorney, receiving, it is said, some $300,000 a year. He has left that lucrative position to become a judge of a New Jersey court of errors and appeals at a salary of only $3,000. He gave his reasons for making the change, in an address before the students of Oberlin College a few days ago. He declared that "conditions in the business and financial world are not wholesome," and that men who become mighty in finance and trade, who are back of these great corporations, are abusing their powers, and are acting on the theory that might makes right. One of Mr. Dill's business associates states that Mr. Dill accepts a place in the public service, feeling that— "the time has come when a corporation lawyer must decide upon which side he will ally himself, whether on the side of honesty, of law and of justice, or with the financial schemers who grow more defiant of law each year, and make demands upon their lawyers for services that conflict with conscientious scruples." These words do not indicate what Governor Folk would have the world believe, that the times past held more of corruption than the time present. Mr. Dill says, "the time has come," etc. That is, there is a condition now which formerly did not exist. He sees a greater defiance of law each year; that to stay with the greedy corporations means participation in dishonesty; he sees a prevalence of most unscrupulous demands upon attorneys, abhorrent to a man with conscientious scruples. As regards graft in high places we quote from the Springfield Republican: "Is there no end to the corruption of employees of the government in the departments at Washington? The post-office department, the interior department, and now the agricultural department, have each revealed brazen dishonesty and graft of the meanest sort. Why, too, have these matters been so long concealed and the people told that things were all right? The exposures in the federal service at this time are beating the records, and disclosing how long and safely rascals have been fattening themselves by rascality, not so slick that it ought to have gone so long without detection." "These government employees in the agricultural department have been accused of selling to Wall Street gamblers information concerning crop conditions in the country, in order that those gamblers might carry on their work with greater certainty of success—and not only selling information, but actually falsifying government statistics—all for a "consideration."" And there are the revelations in the Equitable Life Insurance Company, involving the names of men who have been venerated for a generation by their fellows. What does it all mean?—That the predictions of God's Word concerning these times—"the last days"—are true, and that we are in the last days. S.