How Members of Congress Are Bribed

Excerpt

The Lobbyist.

If a persistent intermeddler without proper warrant in Government affairs, an unscrupulous dealer in threats and promises amongst public men, a constant menace to sworn servants of the people in their offices of trust, a tempter of the corrupt and a terror to the timid who are delegated to power a remorseless enemy to wholesome legislation, a constant friend to conspirators against the common welfare for private gain—if such a compound of dangerous and insolent qualities merged in one personality, active, vigilant, unblushing, be a Lobbyist—then Collis P. Huntington is a Lobbyist at the doors of Congress, in its corridors and in its councils, at Washington.

He is the spirit incarnate of Monopoly in its most aggressive form. Among the intrenched powers which have sapped the vitality and are a menace to the existence of our form of republican government, he is strong with their strength, dangerous with their power, perilous with the insolence of their courtesies, the blandishment of their open or covert threats.

For nearly thirty years he has engendered broadcast political corruption in order to enrich himself and his associate railroad magnates at the public cost.

The declared representative now of those who have been thus far successful conspirators against the general Treasury and ruthless oppressors of every vital interest of defenceless California, with resonant voice and open hand he is clearly visible upon parade, demanding attention from the elected servants of all the people, and easily dwarfing the lessor lobby by the splendor of his equipment.

The English Parliament would relegate such an intruder to the street; the French Deputies point to his credentials with infinite scorn; Italian statesmen would shrink from a perusal of his record, and the Spanish Cortes decline to listen to any plea that men who are at one and the same time known robbers and declared beggars have blended and vested rights as both such to millions of public money.

To the vision of thoughtful rulers and myriads of patriots throughout the world, reading history now as it is being created from day to day, the Anarchist naturally looms in the background of such a spectacle.

In order that a proper side-light be flashed upon him; that his choice methods of dealing with men and accomplishing his purposes may pass in review; that some Californians and many national legislators may be informed of that which they never knew, or reminded of that which they may have forgotten; that the record of his accidental and forced confession in open Court of an appalling use of money in defending stolen millions and grasping after more shall be revived; that his low estimate of the honor and integrity of public men, and his essential contempt for the masses, may be contrasted with his high appreciation of the debauching power of money; that the enslavement by himself and his associates of the naturally great State of California and her indignant people may be once more proclaimed with bitter protest and earnest appeal to all the citizens of our sister States throughout our vast commonwealth; and to the end that no such palpable embodiment of political infamy may continue to stalk without rebuke through all the open ways and sacred recesses of popular power crystallized at Washington—I propose to revive the recollection of—and to briefly comment on—the whilom notorious Huntington-Colton Letters which became public property as part of the records of the Superior Court of Sonoma County in this State.