The Fee System as a Social Force. 
225 
yield fabulous sums; * 1 yet no actual facts can be ascertained as 
to the real value of such offices, as they are usually kept a close 
secret among a favored few of the leading politicians of either 
party. Very often no account of the receipts of office is re¬ 
quired by law; hence none is given. 
These positions are usually the goal of the ambition of every 
politician. There is, therefore, the most intense competition, 
not only within the political parties for obtaining the nomina¬ 
tions, but among the people to secure election when once nomi¬ 
nated. These lucrative offices furnish the life-blood of the 
spoils-system and the political machine. The manipulators of 
the machine, knowing the value of such an office, can levy higher 
assessments for the corruption fund the greater the amount re¬ 
ceived from the office. Especially is this the case where a polit¬ 
ical party practically controls the election. It does not require 
any great power of observation to see that in all local or state 
elections, the heaviest pressure is, as a rule, brought to bear 
on those particular offices in which the remuneration is wholly 
or partly paid in fees or other perquisites. It is the office of 
county sheriff in most places which is the center of the political 
whirlpool. In many Eastern cities the office of prothonotary, 
clerk of court, or recorder is the most powerful incentive to 
political activity. 2 The political forces which are set in motion 
to obtain these lucrative positions, are almost incredible in 
estimates the net annual returns of the office to be $9,800, which is almost 
double the pay of the chief justice of the state and about two and one-half 
times the pay of the judge of the court in which the above named clerk 
belongs.— New York Evening Post , Feb. 15, 1898. 
1 The income of the city clerk of Chicago asserted to be $49,000 for two 
years.-—Chicago Times-Herald , Jan. 16, 1896, p. 1. The Chicago re¬ 
corder’s income was estimated by an investigating committee to have been 
nearly $9,000 for six months.— Ibid., Dec. 7, 1896, p. 7. The position of 
county sheriff in many counties in Wisconsin is said to yield as much as 
$20,000 a year. Many county clerks earn over $5,000 a year in fees. 
Newspaper reports are current that the collector of taxes under Governor 
Warmouth at New Orleans received as fees not less than $100,000 a year 
for four years. 
2 A prominent New York attorney has furnished the following estimates 
which are said to be conservative: The position of sheriff of New York 
county used to yield $125,000; at present it yields about $25,000. The 
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