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Show Campaign Expenses. Mr. Bryan wrote Mr. Taft, suggesting that as leading candidates they unite in asking Congress to pass a bill requiring publication of campaign contributions prior to election. Mr. Taft replied, stating that he had already taken the initiative to bring around that result, and the action of the distinguished candidates has received much favorable fa-vorable comment. Such a rule might stop some of the wholesale corruption that in the cities and some of the states has heretofore disgraced political po-litical campaigns. The bad feature of It is that ' while honest men would obey such a law, corrupt cor-rupt politicians would find a way to evade It. For instance, in many cities, notably New York, it has long been a custom to buy the votes of corruptible voters on election day. The money for that could easily bo raised and distributed by interested parties without the candidate for President or his party managers knowing anything any-thing about it. And so many such schemes could be worked that we have always had the impression that the cry against wholesale cor- 1 ruptlon funds in Presidential elections was never very serious. But the New York Nation springs the point that It would be a good beginning for Mr. Bryan and Mr. Taft to make an accounting now of what has already been spent in trying to fix things in a way to if possible make sure of the nominations. In this connection the Nation says: "It might easily happen that an election would be comparatively pure, although a nom iiiation" for the election had been procured by corrupt means." Then the Nation adds: "Mark Hanna's two years' campaign to bring about the nomination of McKinley in 189G was lavishly financed; and the political paying off of the pecuniary pe-cuniary obligations thus incurred was an embarrassment em-barrassment and a reproach to the administration." administra-tion." That statement from such a source Is particularly particu-larly interesting at this time, because if the Nation knows that fact, both the World and Times, especially the Times, of New York, must know it. And yet the Times, of lofty virtue, was shocked to see published the amount which the men interested in maintaining silver as basic money, in the silver states, subscribed to Mr. Bryan's campaign fund that year. The Times thought "it was sickening," and yet it did not altogether amount to as much as Mr. Hanna collected col-lected from three houses in New York to debauch de-bauch the election of that year. The sparsely settled silver states have been losing some forty or fifty millions of dollars annually an-nually because of the legislation which Mr. Cleveland and the money lords of New York City forced through Congress in 1893, and on a platform, plat-form, too, demanding the full restoration ot silver. Was it so very strange that the men who believed that the full restoration of silver was essential to the welfare of the whole nation, should subscribe a small sum to try to elect a silver President? But there was another feature fea-ture about it. The men who gave that money made no secret of the gift. There was nothing sneaking or underhanded about what they did. They knew that Mr. Hanna would spend more money than all they could raise, in each of the states of New York, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, but they were willing to do what they could. Again, if any legitimate industry in the East were to be menaced by a loss of $50,000,000 a year for all time to come, what would the men interested bo liable to do? Wo mention the matter only to make -clear how different a thing looks to a New York newspaper news-paper like the Times when the gold barons in New York want anything, no matter how dishonest, dishon-est, from what it is when a few men in the West who are being robbed advance a small sum to try to beat back the robbers. |