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GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



July 15. 



him get in his hay. Not a bit of it. If you 

 help him out of a tight place in hnying time, 

 there is nothing about it that needs to be con- 

 cealed. Suppose you go to the man who wants 

 to buy the horse: and, after recommending 

 said horse, and telling of his good qualities, 

 and none of the bad ones, you add, '" By the 

 way, neighbor, perhaps I might mention to 

 you that I am to have five dollars of the money 

 if I succeed in inducing you to make the pur- 

 chase." How would that sound ? What would 

 the would-be purchaser think of both of you if 

 the truth got out? Shame on the man who 

 will sell his good name, or a little bit of it. for a 

 paltrv five dollars! The Bohemian-oat swindle 

 and thousands of other swindles have been 

 spread and propagated in just this sort of way. 



Perhaps a great part of my readers occupy 

 some office of some sort. Most of us have a 

 hand in public affairs. If you are not working 

 for the government, you are working for your 

 village or city corporations. You may be road- 

 ma,ster or school director in the country. The 

 man who occupies such a place as this will be 

 solicited, sooner or later, to use the authority 

 put in his hands to serve self instead of the 

 great public, or liis neighbors and humanity. 

 When I was on our schoolboard, an agent 

 wanted to sell us something new in the way of 

 blackboards. He had some little blackboards 

 for family use. They were worth five or ten 

 dollars apiece; and before he went away he 

 promised each member of the board one of 

 these little blackboards, to be used in hi« home, 

 providing we would give him an order for 

 blackboards for our union school. One of the 

 members of our board gav(> him such a scathing 

 rebuke that it seemed to me as if he ought to 

 remember it for a long time. And let me say 

 right here, that, in all my deal with the great 

 wide world, the men who will accept a bribe 

 are the exception: and I have seen a manly 

 and honest refusal to be a party to any such 

 schemes, a good many times, when I hardly 

 expected it. There are thousands in our land 

 who value the good of our people and the good 

 of our nation so much more than self that a 

 bribe would be out of the question. But, wait 

 a bit. We sometimes accept bribes, even the 

 best of us, without thinking of it. Since our 

 labor strikes, there has been much said about 

 the free-ticket system — the free tickets furnish- 

 ed by railroads to favored ones. I made up 

 ray mind years ago that I would not ask any 

 favors of the railroads. Without asking, how- 

 ever, a pass was given me — a sort of compli- 

 mentary one, in consideration of the large 

 amount of business our enterprise had given 

 the railroad. In one sense it seems a little 

 hard to say that this was wrong. If a man has 

 bought strawberries of you right through the 

 season, paying you a high price when the first 

 berries ripened, would there be any thing 

 wrong in making him a present of a basket of 

 some choice variety, in consideration of the 

 money he had paid you through the season? 

 Why. it would be only a pleasant and neighbor- 

 ly thing unless it might serve to establish a 

 precedent for such things. It used to be more 

 customary than it is now, to treat a friend or 

 relative when he came to see you. We used to 

 ask him to take a glass of beer. As the beer 

 disappeared (as I hope it has disappeared all 

 around you), lemonade or soda took its place; 

 but I am afraid, friends, that even the treating 

 to lemonade or soda tends to encourage the 

 giving and receiving of bribes. 



You have all met office-seekers. You know 

 how they go to work to get your vote and in- 

 fluence. By the way, I wonder if there is a 

 place where people are put into office by tlie 

 voice of their neighbors because they think the 



man a fitting one, and not because he has gone 

 around urging people to help him get said 

 office. It was said to me recently, that no man 

 got into office nowadays unless he wnnted\t 

 and did considerable hard work to get it. Is 

 this true in your neighborhood? I hope it is 

 not. It certainly is not the best way. I do not 

 care if you do say that it is the only way peo- 

 ple can get office. All public offices should be 

 tilled by those whom the cominunity at large 

 decide to be the best person for the place, not 

 by somebody whose principal recommendation 

 is that he wants the place. 



This is too big a subject for me just now. 

 But somebody said to me yesterday, that when 

 a man got a paying office nowadays it costs 

 him a good deal of time and money; and that, 

 after he is in office, he nudist have some way of 

 getting back what he had invested in getting 

 the office; and the way to do it was to look out 

 for chances where he could get it back by 

 favoring somebody else, instead of working for 

 the people at large who support him and who 

 pay the taxes. Is this true? 



A word about getting office. I was asked 

 recently to recommend a person for a certain 

 place. I knew he was competent to till the 

 place, and there did not seem to be any reason 

 why I should not favor him. In fact, I was a 

 little afraid somebody not as competent, and 

 not as good a man. might get it. My position 

 happened to be such that, may be, I turned the 

 scale in his favor. Now, I can not tell whether 

 it was before this talk or afterward that he 

 asked me how we were getting along for coal 

 during the strike. I told him we had a little 

 left, but that we were beginning to feel con- 

 siderably uneasy. "Well," said he, "I knew 

 something about it. and a relation said he 

 guessed he could get you a car if he managed 

 the thing a little, and I think the car was sent 

 along, and will probably be along on your track 

 this afternoon." In a few hours, there the car 

 was, right in the nick of time. It is said that 

 one neighborly act deserves another. 



You see, I have given you a glimpse of all 

 phases of this business of helping somebody 

 who has helped you, or whom you expect to 

 help you. Some of the illustrations we could 

 scarcely call unfair or wrong; others are 

 grievously wrong, or grievous wrongs grow out 

 of them. I have told about the book agent 

 who wanted to give me a book so that he could 

 put my name at the head of his list. I would 

 not have any book in that way. It is bribery, 

 without question; and if a man has influence 

 in his community, he ought to be all the more 

 careful how he Icuds that influence to any one. 



Let me touch upon something else that, while 

 it is not exactly bribery, does place selfish in- 

 terests before the interests of the public at 

 large. A great luany times, express coinpanies 

 carry packages in a roundabout way to their 

 destination in order to "haul" the goods as 

 far as possible on their own lines. Let me 

 explain. We have just been getting beautiful 

 large strawberries from friend Sfelile. of Mari- 

 etta, O.. before ours were ripe. We had an 

 arrangement made so they came through in 

 a few hours, and were bi-ight and fresh, even 

 during extremely hot weather. The last ship- 

 ment, however, fell into the hands of another 

 express company. Of course, friend Stehle ex- 

 pected they would, at the right point, hand it 

 over to the other company, so as to make the 

 shortest cut to Medina. Instead of that, they 

 carried it away around so as to eo all the way 

 on their own line, keeping it out over night 

 besides. The berries were badly jolted, and a 

 much higher express charge was made out, 

 simplv that said company might have all the 

 "hauling," as they terra it. I have raade a 



