COPYRIGHT, 1891; BY THE FORUM PUBLISHING CO. ELECTROTYPED AND PRINTED BY THE PUBLISHERS' PRINTING COMPANY, CONTENTS. Political Corruption in Maryland, Would Free Coinage Bring European Silver Here? Free Coinage and an Elastic Currency, A Case of Good City Government, Industrial Progress of the South, The Intercontinental Railroad Problem, The Work of the British Society of Authors, The Case of the American Author, An Industrial Revolution by Good Roads, What the American Sunday Should Be, VMethods of Restricting Immigration, The Democratic Revolt in New York, How the New York Senate Was Captured, Our Anthracite Supply and Distribution, The Germans as Emigrants and Colonists, The Free-Trade Tendency of William II., Reformatory Prisons as Schools of Crime, Free Coinage and the Loss of Southern Statesmanship, Ten Years of the Standard Oil Trust, . The True Purpose of the Higher Education, Advantages of the Canadian Bank System, Does the Factory Increase Immorality? The Significance of the American Cathedral, Incalculable Room for Immigrants, Ocean Traffic by the Erie Canal, The Standard Oil Trust: the Gospel of Greed, The Waste of Women's Intellectual Force, Why Women are Paid Less than Men, Does the Negro Pay for His Education? . Mr. Harrison's Sound Administration, What Mr. Cleveland Stands For, Unparalleled Industrial Progress, The Disastrous Effects of a Force Bill, An American View of the Irish Question, The Follies of Free-Coinage Agitation, What Psychical Research Has Accomplished, The Western Traffic Association, An Example of Organized Thrift, The Churches and Labor Unions, Why We Have so Few Good Roads, The Forum. MARCH, 1892. POLITICAL CORRUPTION IN MARYLAND. Ir is not a pleasing task for a citizen of Maryland to relate the recent history and describe the actual condition of Maryland politics. The result can hardly leave him proud of his State or enthusiastic as to the merits of popular government. But, however repulsive the study, it may well be fruitful. The first step towards health is for a sick man to realize that he needs medicine; and, if others would escape his sufferings, they also must understand his ailments and how he contracted them. An inveterate malady of the body politic in Maryland is the indulgence of public opinion for offences against the freedom and purity of the suffrage. It is safe to say that a majority of those there holding prominent positions of public trust are widely and reasonably believed to have at some stage of their political career either taken part in fraud, bribery, or violence at legal or "primary" elections, or knowingly accepted offices or nominations secured by such means. And of the really influential politicians, whether in or out of office, the big and little "bosses" and members of "rings" of various diameters, who are the State's true rulers, every one has been more or less implicated in scandals of this character, and nearly every one notoriously owes his power to dexterity and success in falsifying the expression of the people's or of his party's will at the polls. One of them was a leader in the disorders of "know-nothing" times; another was presented for "stuffing" a ballot-box while serving as judge of election in 1875; a third (of somewhat humbler degree) was tried for Copyright, 1891, by the Forum Publishing Company. |