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A brother of “Silver Dick” Bland was nominated for Judge of the Court of Appeals. The Populists had nominated a candidate named North for the same place. It is in evidence in Mr. Bland’s own letters that he gave $1,000 to the Chairman of the Democratic State Central Committee to get North of the track. North withdrew. Afterwards he was reported reporter of the Court of Judge Bland. He denied that he had received $1,000. The Chairman of the State Democratic Committee then said he gave the money to the chairman of the Populist committee. The chairman of the populist committee denies that he got the $1,000. And so the matter stands. The Judge bought off the Populist candidate. The $1,000 is unaccounted for. The $1,000 does not appear in the Judge’s statement of expenses as required by law. This “boodle” deal evokes the query whether if a candidate for Judge will buy his election he will not sell his justice. This deal, too, was consummated in the name of the masses.

I am told that the Governor has given the best places within his gift to his relatives, or the men selected by his relatives. I know that he appointed a man manager of the Nevada asylum on condition that he would vote out the Superintendent. The Superintendent showed the manager a letter from the Governor in which he declared that the Superintendent’s retention was his dearest wish. The manager voted for the retention of the Superintendent and the Governor promptly removed the manager. This illustrates the gubernatorial character beautifully. The Governor of Missouri was receiver of the Fifth National Bank of St. Louis. He gave out that the bank would not pay more than 50 cents on the dollar in all. Therefore, his brother-in-law and other relatives bought up outstanding claims at that figure and below it. They bought up at least $30,000 worth. The bank paid 50 per cent. in sixty days. It has paid ninety-six per cent. in ten years. The question is, how could a receiver say a bank, that was in position to pay 50 per cent. in sixty days, would only pay that much in all? The receiver’s relatives made 46 per cent. on their speculation. This is one of the performances characteristic of this kind of “friends of the people.” The popular cause of silver, with all its generous enthusiasm for the rights of the poor, all its just resentment against oligarchies, political bosses, gangs of “grafters,” combinations of the few for the plucking of the many, was taken charge of, in Missouri, by politicians of the type which can be imagined from what I have stated here of simple fact and conservative deduction. The cause of silver may be my “pet aversion” as a political theory, but I have all respect for the honest multitude who espoused it. I am convinced that what there is of good in that theory of reform of our evils is not advanced toward embodiment in our law by the character of the men who make the Chicago platform an excuse to get the public confidence and carry out schemes of public plunder, political corruption and miscellaneous incivism.

A few days ago Judge Klein in our Circuit Court uncovered what we call “a graft” in the matter of building association receiverships. It was discovered that politics stepped into these affairs to get for certain political lawyers, good fees. There was a ring in the receiverships of these concerns. The commissioner in one case would be attorney in another. The attorney in one case would be receiver in another with the commissioner as attorney and receiver as Commissioner. There were fees for all. No duty in connection with winding up the associations, to which there attached any compensation, was ever given outside the “charmed circle.” Political attorneys got large fees for only going into court and asking that building associations be wound up. All these fees came out of the money of the poor people, which happened to be left after the looting or failure of the concerns. Those whose savings were invested in the concerns had little coming to them after the failures. The fees of the ring left little of that. All this “grinding of the faces of the poor” is being accomplished by those politicians who were most vocal in proclaiming their allegiance to the Chicago platform as a new “Magna Charta of Mankind.”