The County: The "Dark Continent" of American Politics

by Henry S. Gilbertson

“A supervisor would draw thousands of dollars from the road and bridge funds on his own warrant, put the money in his pocket, and account for it by turning in receipts for road or bridge work. Some of this work was done and some was not. Most of the receipts were signed by political supporters of the supervisors. To some of them were signed names of persons who never existed.

“Everything the county bought was extravagantly bought. Any dealer who was willing to put in padded bills could get the chance to sell his goods.

“There was a regular system of letting bills go unpaid so that the persons furnishing the goods would put in the statements the second time, after which they would be paid twice—once to the firm to which they were really owing, and again to one or more of the county ring. In most cases the merchant furnishing the goods never knew of the double payment. They had a system of orders and receipts by which the merchant was kept in ignorance.

“In some cases the approaches to bridges were built and charged twice, once to the road fund and once to the bridge fund. The man who did the work got one payment and the grafters got the other. The people paid twice in these cases, and sometimes three times.

“A merchant sold some blankets to the county for the use of the prisoners in the jail. He was allowed about a hundred dollars on the county claim register, but refused to accept the payment and sued the county. In court he recovered judgment for all he claimed, and was paid out of the judgment fund. The general fund claim he had refused to accept showed as unpaid. Somebody on the inside went to him and got an order for ‘any sums due me from the county’ and drew the original bill over again. So the county paid the original allowance, the amount of the judgment, and the costs of the lawsuit. Rather dear blankets!

“Orders of this sort were drawn in the names of the people who had been dead for years.

“This is a sample of the sort of work which prevailed in that county, and which plunged the county into debt from which it will not recover, the way things generally go, for generations.”

In Indiana the leaven of obscurity and irresponsibility had long been working when the state board of accounts took up its work in 1909. The records of that office since that time show that more than one million six hundred thousand dollars had been charged against local officials and partly recovered. The board states that in their belief fully ninety per cent. of this was not due to deliberate wrongdoing but to an indulgent indifference, resulting in an almost endless confusion and incomplete accounts. Like the county officers in many another state, the officials in the Indiana counties, according to a message of former Governor Mount, “had been following precedents on an ascending scale.”

If the whole trouble lies in the personnel of government, there is either no real county problem or else the problem is unsolved. If it is merely a matter of men, the voters of the county need only, when the next election falls due, to “turn the rascals out” and elect more promising successors. But then that is what the voters have been doing these many years, and county government has not materially improved!

But if when the “good man” theory has been tested to the limit and found wanting, nothing else appears, may it not be suggested that the system has much to do with the man first in his selection and then in the influence that determines his conduct? The officers in the counties cited were creatures of the flesh. They found themselves involved in an organization which not only gave them little or no moral support, but which actually surrounded them with temptation to loaf, to commit errors and to steal. They were under no discipline to obey the law or to treat the interests of the county with any due consideration.