Today we call them investigative reporters, people who burrow into the inner workings of business/government relationships that corruptly enrich a few and harm the many—not unlike too many things we are seeing today at the national and even the state levels wherever you might live.
In our entries today and on Wednesday we are going to bring you Lincoln Steffens’ “Enemies of the Republic” from the October, 1904 issue of McClures magazine. But first, we need to set the stage.
“Boodle” in those days referred to bribery. A boodler was one who gave or who accepted bribes to influence public policy.
The story of the great boodle scandal in Missouri came to me many years ago in researching the stories of the ministers of my church in Jefferson City and the brief career here of Crayton S. Brooks, a fiery temperance preacher who came to what was then a pretty wide open town particularly when the legislature was in session every other year.
On Sunday evening, March 1, 1903 Rev. Crayton S. Brooks—whose preaching earlier had led to the closing of pool halls and gambling houses—asserted from his pulpit at the First Christian Church four blocks from the Capitol that “there were $1,000 bills being exchanged in Jefferson City by men not in the habit of handling such amounts of money,” the implication being that they were buying votes in the legislature.
St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter Joseph J. McAuliffe happened to be in one of the pews that night and wrote about the sermon. There is a lot I wish we knew about their relationship and why a St. Louis reporter “happened” to be at the church that night, but we do know that Brooks admired St. Louis prosecutor Joe Folk for his earlier work to bring down Ed Butler, the St. Louis political boss and had made a trip to St. Louis earlier in the year, although the accounts do not say why, leaving the door open to some speculation.
Representative Edward Eversole of St. Louis was named to lead a committee investigation and started summoning witnesses from among the lobbying corps. He said, “We saw men we wanted standing about the corridors and lobby of the Capitol four deep, but as soon as one or two were served there was a wild stampede and the greatest time you ever heard of getting out of town.”
He investigation eventually led to the indictments of four Senators who were accused of taking bribes for their votes on a bill concerning the ingredients of baking powder. Steffans will explain that in his article. Lieutenant Governor John Adams Lee, who planned to run for governor in 1904, was exposed as the middle man who delivered the bribes from the Royal Baking Powder Trust to the four legislators, resigned and fled to Chicago.
Steffens’ article said, “There is nothing partisan about graft. Only the people are loyal to party. The ” hated” trusts, all big grafters, go with the majority. In Democratic Missouri, the Democracy is the party of “capital.” The Democratic political leaders, crying down the trusts, corner the voters like wheat, form a political trust, and sell out the sovereignty of the people to the corporation lobby. And the lobby runs the State, not only in the interest of its principals, but against the interest of the people.”
In 1992, Missourians adopted term limits, an amendment that missed the target it should have hit and as we have seen in the years since opened the door to loss of legislative independence and replaced it with—too often—outside influence. As it was put in 1992, adoption of term limits will end corporate memory in the legislature and the power to set public policy will pass from the legislative chambers to the hallways.
I watched it happen. Only after term limits went into effect did I hear the sponsor of a bill ask someone with an amendment, “Have you run this by so-and-so in the hall?” The question became unnecessary as cell phones proliferated and lawmakers could get messages while debating bills. House and Senate rules ban lobbyists from the legislative floors. But the cell phone’s texting app puts them there electronically.
Ineffective campaign spending limits and a U. S. Supreme Court ruling that corporations are, for political speech purposes, to be considered “people,” have had a profound effect on who gets access, how much of it they get and how they become manipulative of the process.
Understand that this is not saying all of our elected officials are crooked or can be bought. We have to trust the people we elect but we also must be aware of the awful pressures they endure to serve and the all-consuming world they live in for four intense months every year. Political courage sometimes is weakened in that climate because they are human and we sometimes are disappointed when the podium we put them on is not as high as we think it is.
We voters have a responsibility to pay attention to the issues they are dealing with so that our lawmakers are regularly reminded who they really work for.
Citizen cynicism is easy to come by and is a reflection on the citizen who refuses to maintain at least a modicum of awareness and is therefore less likely to be “cornered like wheat.”
That is where the reporter has a place—to expose as well as report. A good reporter has to have a bit of the spirit of Lincoln Steffens inside and our media must recognize the responsibility they have to be unafraid to rake muck when necessary.
Good reporters do not want to be liked by the people they report about. Nor do they want to be hated. They do hope to be respected as a necessary element of a free society. And they should be conscious of their responsibilities to citizens on both sides the aisle. They also must be unafraid, and expect those who employ them to be unafraid, too.
On Wednesday, you will read Lincoln Steffens’ Enemies of the Republic. It, unfortunately, has elements of truth that you will recognize in our present times.
(Picture Credit: Brooks—St. Louis Republic