Methods of Reform. 
285 
corded time God said “Let there be light and there was light. 1 
I remember that the streets of our cities are perhaps quite as 
much redeemed from lawlessness by the lamp posts as by the 
church spires. In politics, where men rise by the formal ap¬ 
proval of their fellows I do not believe that public and con 
fessed corruption can have any continuing hold or advancement. 
How small a percentage or corrupt change in the votes will 
effect results is surprising. Thus at the general election in 
Wisconsin for 1892, which was not considered a close election 
either, there were 371,559 votes cast for governor and the ma¬ 
jority of our Democratic friend Governor Peck over our Republi¬ 
can friend Senator Spooner was 7,598. From this it is plain 
that a change of a trifle more than one per cent, of the voters 
would have defeated Gov. Peck, his doctrines and his party, and 
seated Senator Spooner and his friends. And as Gov. Peck’s 
majority was larger in Wisconsin than President Cleveland’s, 
a still smaller change would have reversed the result in the 
state as to the federal election. In 1884 when the nationa^ 
election turned on the majority in New York, a corrupt change 
of 575 votes, or less than one-twentieth of one per cent , in that 
one state, would have changed the whole national election at 
which over ten million votes were cast. 
If ambitious and unscrupulous wealth is allowed to buy office 
there will too often be found this small percentage of degraded 
or necessitous voters wdio will sell votes enough to turn the 
scale, and the great body of honest men must submit to masters 
unfairly chosen and the mercenaries dominate the elections. 
We must hunt down and destroy these petty corruptions, to 
borrow a figure from the Plymley Letters, “ as a burgomaster 
huhts a rat in a Dutch dyke, for fear it should flood a province. ” 
The Indiana law of 1889, just declared constitutional by the 
supreme court of that state, is worthy of consideration. It 
gives to any elector bribed to cast his ballot for a candidate, or 
sought to be bribed, the right to recover $300 damages and 
reasonable attorney’s fees from any person who so bribes or 
seeks to bribe him, and thus makes it more profitable to prose¬ 
cute than to take and hide the bribe. It punishes, too, the 
moneyed temptor and not the poor and needy victim of temptation. 
