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The Secrets of the Great City by Edward Winslow Martin
page 32 of 524 (06%)
The President could not hear a word of any kind until a vote had been
taken upon the question whether the main question should be now put.
That question was carried in the affirmative, by a chorus of _ayes_, so
exactly timed that it was like the voice of one man. Then the main
question _was_ put, and it was carried by another emphatic and
simultaneous shout.


POLITICAL BLACK MAIL.

Mr. Parton thus briefly exposes the system of political black mail
practiced in the City government:

The plunder of the persons who are so unfortunate as to serve the
public, and of those who aspire to serve the public, is systematic, and
nearly universal. Our inquiries into this branch of the subject lead us
to conclude that there are very few salaries paid from the city or
county treasury which do not yield an annual per centage to some one of
the 'head-centres' of corruption. The manner in which this kind of
spoliation is sometimes effected may be gathered from a narrative which
we received from the lips of one of the few learned and estimable men
whom the system of electing judges by the people has left upon the
bench in the City of New York. Four years ago, when the inflation of
the currency had so enhanced the price of all commodities that there
was, of necessity, a general increase of salaries, public and private,
there was talk of raising the salaries of the fourteen judges, who were
most absurdly underpaid even when a dollar in paper and a dollar in
gold were the same thing. Some of the judges were severely pinched in
attempting to make six thousand half-dollars do the work which six
thousand whole ones had accomplished with difficulty; and none,
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