Original Document

SIX PROPOSITIONS DISCUSSED.

My friends, I wish to present six distinct heads in this address, and I do not believe you will find either of them bald, small or empty. A drum-headed man said: 'Your speeches make me tired,' and he has never smiled on me since he was asked whether it was the fault of my speeches or his head:

• 1. What is the use of being a hard-working, economical farmer in Pennsylvania?


• 2. Your enemy, the Quay machine.


• 3. Its size and ramifications.


• 4. Its corporation allies and partners.


• 5. The money filched from you.


• 6. The sure cure.


First- What is the use of spending your time in discussing and introducing new systems of drainage and fencing and cattle feeding, adopting labor-saving mower and more costly fertilizers if at the end of the year one hand only washes the other and nothing's left. Why does not farming pay better in Pennsylvania? Why will not untiring toil, rigid economy and personal sacrifice decrease or keep away the mortgage? What is the use of chattering this year like a lot of parrots and coming back next year to face the results? Bountiful crops and great granaries full year after year, and no' money in it for anybody but the mortgage owner and the tax gatherer! Only a bare living; not much, if any, above common laborer's wages for anybody en the farm.

Prices, to be sure, are lower than fifty years ago when threshing was done by the flail, but the relative cost of production and the selling prices are about the same. No matter how much more you raise to the acre your profits are down to zero. - To be dependent on Leiter speculation or upon the disasters of failing crops and famine, to come out whole or with a profit is discouraging to all following the business of farming and a misfortune to self-respecting people. I feel sure there is some rectification for all this. I would not change the large inlets to your barns and granaries, but I would lessen the size of the outlets from them; You pay too much taxes and too large tribute to the corporations. The fault is not wholly with your incomes; it is the fixed charges that eat them up. Yon have groaned and gone to sleep and woke up with the nightmare until she is the oldest mare on your place.

Your mortal enemy is a political machine, in parts 40 years old, and for 20 years known as the Quay machine. Like a spectral figure of evil stalking through the land it has gone about, the very genius of ruin. You must try to understand what this machine is; its ramifications, its tens of thousands of paid workers, their gigantic strength, the 8mances of county, State and national organizations.

Second-. What constitutes a political machine? It is a place of power like Senator, Governor, State Treasurer and a union or Sugar Trust or all such who hold places, a close and secret working together to keep themselves in and keep out all who will not divide with them; a confederacy to send to the bottomless pit all who interfere with their holding the office and each office-holder provided with an office, room and desk for political business at the public expense, in which to work during hours the salary paid by the public purse, though for days, weeks and even months, the only or principal work done is for personal or party gain. These men are at work continually taking the money to defeat the people's will and to serve the machine.

Third-The size and ramifications of this politica1 machine–I have taken great pains to accurately gather some of the facts that I now state. It must not be understood that there are not exceptions of true men in the various departments of the Government serve both Federal and State as well as hundreds of independent newspapers not dominated by the Quay machine, but when men like Senator Kauffman, of Lancaster, and Daniel Moore and Plummer Jeffries are whipped out of office for opposition to the bosses' will, and the Finneys, Saylors and Lytles are set up on the. front bench in high places to show how to get on with the machine, the exceptions to subserviency to Quayism are but few.

PARTS OF THE QUAY MACHINE.

Twenty parts of the potent, puzzling and destructive Quay machine, constituted of Federal and State officeholders, are as follows:-

• Part A- A Republican State Committee which in. every part is subjugated to serve the personal interests of Senator. Quay first and the party next, without respect to the will of the people.


• Part B-Great prestige and patronage, controlled by Quay as a United States Senator, with two votes, his own and the other.


• Part C-Thirty Congressmen, with their secretaries, sixty persons, whose salaries aggregate $180,000 annually, and who are responsible to the machine for their respective districts.


• Part D-The 419 officers and employees of the State government, who receive in salaries $1,034,500 annually, and who are selected only because they are supposed to be able to deliver the votes of their districts to anyone the Quay machine dictates. These men are all assessed by the bosses and some of the documents in our possession will be curious reading some time.


• Part E-The State Senate, with every officer, from president pro tem down to page boys, selected to do the machine's bidding. The expenses of the Senate last year were $169.604.


• Part F-The State House of Representatives, with members, officers and employees, 257 in number, who drew $468,302 last year. All committees are selected by the machine, and are chair-manned by men who know no will but that of Senator Quay. Thus his machine absolutely controls all revenues and tax legislation.


• Part G-Eight thousand one hundred and twenty two post offices, with salaries amounting to $3,705,446. Most postmasters are made the personal agents of the machine in their respective towns.


• Part H-Four thousand one hundred and forty-nine offices, a majority of whom are controlled by Senators Quay's machine, whose salaries amount to $5,000,000.


• Part I-The Philadelphia Mint, with 438 employees, who receive in yearly Salaries $326,565


• Part J-The offices of collector of port, with 400 employees, who receive in salaries $454,000.


• Part K-The internal revenue offices, with 281 employees, who receive in salaries $356,400.


• Part L-The United States Circuit and District Courts, with forty-one employees, who receive in salaries $95,000.


• Part M-League Island Navy Yard and State arsenals, with 585 employees, who receive in salaries $125,000, making a total of 14,705 officers and employees who receive from the State and National Governments $7,608,911 annually.

ORGANIZED TO SERVE QUAY

This great army of officeholders are thoroughly organized, and are at work every day in the year for the preservation of the Quay machine. To give you a clearer conception of what the machine is, I have taken, for example, a single county that of Dauphin-which is eleventh in population and thirteenth in a1uation, of the sixty-seven counties of this State. In this Quay stronghold there are seventy-three salaried county offices, controlled by the machine, with annual salaries amounting to $70,500; also seven Presidential post offices, paying salaries amounting to $12,000, and fifty-one fourth class offices, paying $8924, making a total of 131 machine agents who are paid $91,424 by the State and National Governments, at work in one county.

• Part N-The thousands of trustees, other officials and employees of hospitals, State and private; State prisons, reformatories, State asylums, charitable homes, State colleges, normal schools, soldiers' orphan schools, scientific institutes and museums, who are expected to support the machine or the appropriations of their institutions will be endangered.


• Part O-The combined capital of the brewers of the State, their thousands of employees and dependent patrons whom they control. It is alleged to have been the money of the brewers that paid the large sums during Superintendent of Mint Boyer's administration as State Treasurer, necessary to make good shortages which saved the machine, when his cashier Mr. Livesey, became a fugitive from justice.


• Part P-Besides the amounts paid for salaries of State officers which have already been accounted for, the appropriation committees, who are of Quay's personal selection, disburse $10,000,000 annually to schools, hospitals, penal institutions, etc. The bold manipulation of these funds for the benefit of the machine has educated people to regard moneys 'received for these purposes as personal contributions from 'Senator Quay, in return for which they must render help to 'his machine.


• Part Q-The State Liquor League, whose members are in every city, town, hamlet and cross-roads throughout the State, and who maintain a permanent State, organization, having headquarters and representatives at Harrisburg during the sessions of the Legislature, are always for Senator Quay's machine, and form an important part of' the machine's operations.


• Part R-A large number of the Common Pleas Judges throughout the State, who use their license-granting power for the benefit of the machine, by rewarding those faithful to the cause of Quay, and punishing those opposed to the machine.


• Part S-The millions of withheld school and personal tax: moneys that are used to further the interests of the machine. At 3 percent interest-the rate that Smedley Darlington testified, last week, under oath, his trust company paid-the machine has taken $2,500,000 of your money since Senator Quay began his reign.


• Part T-The hundreds of subservient newspapers who are recipients of machine favors, with their army of newsgatherers and correspondents, who are forced to chloroform public sentiment and hide the iniquities of the machine.

CORPORATIONS AS ALLIES

Fourth- The principal allies and partners of the machine are the corporations. The 15,000 national and State office holders and the thousands of other officials connected with State institutions form a small part of the whole number of obedient machine men who are constantly at the command of Senator Quay, the admitted boss of the machine. The corporation employees of the State who are controlled for Quay's use increase the number to the proportions of a vast army.

The steam railroads of the State employ 85,117 men and pay them annually in wages $49,400,000. Of this number the Pennsylvania and Reading Railroads furnish 37,911, and 16,083 men respectively. The Vanderbilt system furnishes 12,432- men, the Baltimore & Ohio 3,615, the New Jersey Central 2,864, the Lehigh Valley 12,062, and the D. L. & W., 2,150. The great street railways of the State, who have received valuable legislative concessions for nothing, give the machine a loyal support with 12,079 employees, who are paid in salaries $6,920,692 every year.

That monopoly of monopolies, the Standard Oil Company, pays annually $2,500,000 to its 3,000 employees who are taught fidelity to Senator Quay's machine. The Bethlehem Iron Works, whose armor plates are sold to the Government for nearly double the contract price offered to foreign countries, influence their employees to such an extent that in the city of Bethlehem it has been found difficult to get men to stand as anti-Quay delegates.

The thousands of workingmen of the Carnegie Iron Works, it is said, are marched to the polls under the supervision of superintendents and foremen, and voted for Quay candidates under penalty of losing their jobs.

The great express companies who furnish franks to machine followers, one of which is bossed by Senator Platt, with their thousands of men, can be counted on for great service to the machine.

The telegraph companies, whose State officials can, it is said, be found at the inner Quay councils, with the thousands of employees distributed at every important point throughout the State, and before whom a large share of all important news must pass, is one of the most dangerous parts of the Quay machine.



Credit: John Wanamaker, "The Quay Machine Dissected," The speeches of Hon. John Wanamaker on Quayism and boss domination in Pennsylvania politics. Published under the direction of the Business men's Republican league of the state of Pennsylvania, 1898.