WHICH ROAD SHALL HE TAKE?
A GRAFTER IN EVERY ROAD.
The Public stands at the crossing of the roads, wondering which way he shall go with his money. Wherever he turns he sees a grafter in the road before him. The labels on these seven grafters give the names of a few of those that beset every honest man's pathway. The grafters spend twenty million dollars a year advertising; and they swindle the people out of one hundred and sixty million dollars annually.
Nation, States and Cities Aroused.
Senators and congressmen at the national capital have been impeached, and indicted, and tried, and convicted of grafting.
Bureau officials, as in the cotton scandal, the postoffice frauds, and other of the departments, and civil service exposes have been arraigned by their own democracy for traitor intrigues with King Graft, and have been beheaded.
State senators, representatives, treasurers and the innumerable "small fry" of official life, together with the millionaire briber and his henchmen at state capitals, have been uncovered and convicted of debauching democracy in behalf of a pretender sovereign.
Great cities have been shaken with the inquisitorial rounds of investigations. Philadelphia of Independence memories has been weighed in the balance and found wanting; in St. Louis the prosecutor governor, Folk, has stirred corruption to the depths; New York has been moved as it has not been since the overthrow of Tammany; Minneapolis has been cleansed; and the spectacular "graft hunt" in Milwaukee has been a lesson in "how to do it." Perhaps never before in the history of America have so many grafters been scattered to the winds, in hiding or locked behind the bars of prisons.
President Leads Foes of Graft.
But King Graft wears the crown of the pretender still, and there are few of his fighting enemies who are disposed to rest upon their arms in either truce or armistice.