The Complete Works of Brann, the Iconoclast — Volume 10

by William Cowper Brann

"The Hon. Bardwell Slote, of the Cohosh district, Indiana, made his first appearance on the floor yesterday. He experienced some difficulty in delivering his half dozen speeches on the various manuscripts in his trunks. The speaker was savagely oblivious. The Hon. Slote will add much to the gaiety of nations. The distinctive articles of his attire were a red cravat, a coat of the vintage of '49, a tobacco-stained shirt-front and a whisp of oakum- colored chin beard. As a bit of bric-a-brac, or a curio from one of the oldest portions of the unhallowed west, he will be of value in the interior decoration of the Capitol, but it is to be feared that his oratorical vent has been choked up for some time to come."

As time goes on the Hon. Slote finds his uses. He visits the departments with persistency. He is followed by a trail of officeseekers from home. He finds that he must wait like a servant in the ante-rooms of the secretaries. He does not wield much influence. His party leaders realize the value of his vote and order him to cast it when they want it. The qualities of the man bring him forward. He has been a heeler in the small politics of his own county and he becomes a wrestler with two or three hundred heelers from other parts of the republic. The professional widow, clad in the sable habiliments of woe, takes him into a quiet corner and leans against him hard. The Hon. Slote becomes wildly excited and promises to leg for her bill. He legs for it until it passes and goes up to the court of claims. Then the widow knows him no more. A young lady, with freshly colored cheeks and golden hair streaming down her back, looks at him tenderly in the House restaurant. He follows her outside the Capitol and boards a car with her and scrapes acquaintance with her, and goes back to his lean but fiery wife some time that night, looking and feeling like a dissipated tom cat stealing homeward over the roofs in the gray of a chilly morning. He is introduced to the poker game at Chamberlin's and finds that he can hold more big hands and get more of them beaten than in any place he ever saw in his life. He discovers that the whisky sold in the Capitol is sudden death at a distance of 150 yards against the wind. He draws his first month's wage of $416 and finds that his resolution to save $316 of it might as well not have been made. His mileage money has been spent long before. The fact is borne in on him that it is necessary only that he answer to his name at 12 o'clock roll call. He will not be allowed to make speeches anyhow and can, if he chooses, fill in his time talking to the professional widow and the young lady of the restaurant.

At the end of the two years' term he returns to his home a wiser man. He encourages the idea that in order to get good results it is necessary to return a congressman for many sessions. He has had a taste of the fleshpots. He is sent back. At the next session he is an "old member." His capacity for chicanery has been increased by experience. Having little morals to start with, he is now as utterly conscienceless as it is possible for a man to be and keep out of jail. He gets his bills through by "fine work." He prefers to be known as a mole that works under ground. He has formed an ability to add materially to his income. He would get rich, but for the fact that his expenses have increased with his earnings. He has from one to four female employes of the government "on his staff." He seeks constantly for youthful typewriters. He has learned to dress in a manner that does not shock the populace. His voice takes on an unctuous greasy timbre. He has become something of an authority on canvas-back and wines. His head is full of "schemes" and the pre-requisite of them all is governmental appropriation. In return for his vote in favor of several more or less iniquitous measures, grabs and steals, he has obtained appropriations for the federal building at Bungtown and the light house at Jim Ned creek. The money for the deep water harbor at Squashville is carried in the general rivers and harbors bill and he has hopes that the federal court will sit at Eden the next year. He is more solid with his constituents. Many of them have been made postmasters and railway postal clerks and inspectors of various kinds. One of them has even been given a consulate at Demerara and writes many letters home bearing strange looking stamps. The Hon. Slote at this period is puffy under the eyes. Three Turkish baths a week keep him going. His wife has learned not to question him too closely, and, possible, has found consolations of her own.

So he goes on from year to year. He does not sink any lower in the scale of morality, because already he is about as low as he can get. When a man reaches a stage where he depends for his living altogether on public office and to obtain that office is compelled to fight politicians with their own weapons, not much more need be said than a simple statement of the case. When the day of his decapitation arrives—and it comes to him soon or late—he is apt to develop into a lobbyist. Having been a congressman gives him the right to the floor of the House or Senate. He will be found later on championing any bill that has money in it, no matter how patent the steal.

This description of the Hon. Bardwell Slote, of Cohosh, is not in any way overdrawn. It is, in fact, conservative, If an exact portraiture of him were given, the ICONOCLAST would be unmailable. There are some men in the American House of Representatives who are ornaments to the Republic. They are honest, patriotic and intelligent. But they are woefully few. Slote may stand for the ruck of them. They are immoral and pestiferous demagogues, robbing the public whose pay they draw, and willing to go any length to maintain their seats. Washington is notoriously a rotten city, sexually and politically, and the representatives in Congress, more than any other component of the body civic, help to make it so.

This state of affairs will continue until men are chosen by the people distinctly for merit and past services, and for these things only. There are in the state of Texas to-day, and in every other state of the Union, for that matter, a hundred demagogues who are known to be demagogues. They have fed like buzzards upon the rotting offal of politics and the people continue to vote for them. Every now and then the ICONOCLAST reaches out and whacks one of them a fell blow upon his sconce, but, having tied up his head, he once again returns to his business of craving alms at the hands of his fellows.

If I wanted to send a daughter of mine to perdition, I would leave her in Washington dependent upon the influence of some congressman on the wrong side of forty. If I wished to insure for my son a liberal and eternal dose of hell-fire, I would set before him any one of two hundred representatives and tell him to follow their example in all things. The girl might land as a leader in low-necked bare-armed and swell-busted society or in a bagnio and the boy might land in Congress or in the penitentiary. Washington, D. C., November 23, 1897.

MONDE AND DEMI MONDE.

BY ETHELYN LESLIE HUSTON.

Once upon a time in the city of Detroit there lived a society woman who was very wealthy. Her home was one of the most regal of the Woodward avenue mansions. Her aristocratic limbs were clothed in the softest of silks, her delicate hands were weighed down with costliest jewels, her retinue of servants were worthy the princely hospitalities she extended to those of her august order, and her charities—upon occasion—were as munificent as the gifts of gods.