40,000 ILLEGAL BALLOTS IN ONE YEAR.
The situation today is appalling. The foundations of government are menaced.
From reliable sources, and from information gained by investigating bodies backed by the reform element, 40,000 illegal names stand on the poll-list of the city!
This is the heavy, moral and political-destroying artillery of the vice generals. This is the battalion that drops “yes” in the ballot box to make vice supreme.
It is composed of the riffraff of humanity, of the wreckage and driftwood of the country.
Every member sells his citizenship for a piece of silver, a poisonous drink, a mess of pottage.
They are the army of “floaters” and “repeaters,” who are massed, housed and fed in the regions of the vice lords, a week or two before elections, and proclaim their unholy allegiance to their masters by the prostitution of the ballot box and the overthrow of clean, honest, moral government.
Each man has a past;—vice wrecked the moral conscience of some, brutal crime destroyed respect in others and drink slew the convictions of still other thousands.
They infest, in the large majority, those political territories where crime and vice are centered.
The means of defeating an honest election and securing politico-vice control are many.