PITTSBURG POLITICS

Virtuous observers who washed their hands studiously after reading of the "Ohio gang" and to whom politics is a concatenation of corruption, will receive new shocks upon reading the tales of Pennsylvania politics now current in the press. It is truly obvious that politics in Pennsylvania are not conducted with kid gloves. But to those interested in the organized basis of American politics, in its accepted and unblushing practices, in the forces, which periodically corral the "phantom public" and compel it to electoral articulation, and in the eagerness of men benefiting in party policies to continue party patrous, the revelations come as a welcome addition to knowledge.

The unexampled simplicity of the manipulations is enlightening. Perhaps the vadir of corruption lay in Allegheny County where the Mellon interests obtained a majority for Senator Pepper. For "watchers" at the polls, the campaigners spent some $350,000 to hire some 35,000 men. Since the total vote for Pepper was but 80,000, it is obvious that, had these party hirelings carried with them only one family vote beside their own, almost all the votes cast for Pepper could be said to have been bought. This is the large scale, the breath-taking exaggeration, the emergency operation of American habits in politics.

Undoubtedly, the universality of these methods can be doubted. Yet it seems to be the consensus of opinion among recent political writers that the political current runs along quietly and corruptly in the shade. Usually corruption is not over-done. Professional politicians are not always exorbitant in their demands. They lack only support and power from the machine they operate and the government they support. Men with sufficient comprehension of the social purposes of party organization to try to keep its amateur standing, are conspicuous chiefly by their civic absence.