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UR Grand Jury is debauched," Mr. Jerome affirmed, in the early days of the campaign. "I trust that no one in this audience will believe that I am saying this merely to make a startling statement. I am saying it in all calmness after years of observation of the Grand Jury system. Our whole Grand Jury system is debauched and rotten. Our Crand Juries are a mockery of justice.

"When I assert this, I know well that some of you will say, 'Oh, Jerome is a fanatic; he deals in overstatements.' But do any of you know how a Grand Jury is drawn? I do, for I have seen it often. A justice walks in, hat on head, cigar in mouth, and says to, an attendant, The Grand Jury will now be drawn.' The clerk puts a number of slips with names on them into the disk, and spins it round. Then the slips are drawn, and a conversation of this sort takes place: John Harsen Rhoades, banker '--and the slip is put back. Patrick MacDougal, liquordealer' 'Ah, that's our man '-and MacDougal, the liquor-dealer, goes on the jury. That is a sample of the way Grand Juries are drawn under the existing government.

"Our Grand Juries might no doubt indict me. They won't indict anybody else. They refused to indict Gannon, the police captain we found sitting in the parlor of the Webster Hotel the night we raided it. The charge against Gannon was neglect of duty. The Grand Jury could not see that he had been negligent; yet the proprietors of the Hotels Dam and Jefferson, and thirty-one citizens living in the neighborhood of the Webster Hotel,

had repeatedly petitioned Captain Gannon to stop the disorderly proceedings there. It was complained in the neighborhood that the disorder was so flagrant that old residents had been compelled to move away for the sake of their families. Yet Captain Gannon went his way unmoved, permitting the Webster Hotel to run in spite of all the protests of decent citizens; and why?

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Simply because he was getting the stuff for protecting it! He dares not deny this.

"We raided the hotel twice again after the raid on which we found Captain Gannon being entertained by the proprietor in the back parlor. But what is the result? The Webster Hotel is doing business at the same old stand, and the wives and daughters of citizens passing there or living in the neighborhood are exposed nightly to the insults of bad men and bad women, so that a man dares not take his wife or daughter past its doors except in a carriage. Yet the Grand Jury refused to find an indictment against Captain Gannon. What can you expect in your municipal government when there is corruption such as this in your Grand Juries?" 1

Mr. Jerome himself was as explicit in attack as he had been in his proposals for reform. He was far from naming such persons and such bodies only as among reformers it had become customary and even obligatory to name. He named, as has been seen, the Grand Jury, he named the City Council, he named the Supreme

'Captain Gannon was last month dismissed from the police force, and, prosecuted by the District Attorney, was convicted by a jury in the criminal court of criminal malfeasance in office.

There were already in the Supreme Court, in Mr. Jerome's opinion, men whose honesty could not be trusted; and he dealt as boldly with the question of their honesty as with the question of their learning. He did so at his peril. "I know well," he said, "what all these statements mean to me if I am defeated and go back to private practice; but I do not mean to be deterred by that. There are certain men in the Supreme Court deserving all our respect and honor; there are certain men deserving neither respect nor honor. I am saying only what is known and currently commented on by members of the bar. At a meeting of the Bar Association I heard a lawyer say (and he mentioned the man's name) that there is a judge in the Supreme Court who is a tout for Richard Croker's insur

ance company. His words have never been challenged by that judge. To me, indeed, it seems that he was liable to punishment for contempt of court; but what he said has never yet been challenged. It is an appalling thing that any doubt should rest upon the honor of any judge of the Supreme Court." "Ask any honest lawyer," he said later, "how certain justices of the Supreme Court were nominated. Ask the members of the bar if they do not have to pick and choose between justices in any matter that affects the interests of the Metropolitan Street Railway Company." And, again: "I tell you there are judges in the Supreme Court in this county of New York of whom it is true that the most potent influence behind them is the Metropolitan Street Railway Company, which put them where they are. Ask any lawyer in large practice in this city who knows what the courts are, and he will tell you I am speaking the truth-the absolute truth."

If a distinction may be drawn between enthusiasm and attention, Mr. Jerome's audiences grew more and more attentive. The average American is somewhat cynically indifferent to venality in the subordinate members of the administration, but he is sensitive to anything that touches the integrity of the judiciary. The depredations of the unofficial licenser he feels that he can afford to suffer; the sponge story, the lemon story, the cravat

lighted recognition, but they aroused more mirth than wrath. With the police and their superiors he feels his own con cern to be remote. But in every contract that he makes and in every credit that he gives he relies on the machinery of justice. He becomes uneasy at the notion that even a trial jury can be bought and sold; that a grand jury can be packed, that a Supreme Court can be tampered with, are statements before which he loses his last semblance of levity. Mr. Jerome spoke with a convincing accent of certainty and gravity; his audiences grew grave; the party managers on his own side grew more and more dismayed. What gave them pause was not the attack upon the courts, it was the attack upon the Metropolitan Street Railway Company. Mr. Whitney and his colleagues were accustomed to abstain from party politics; it was to their obvious interest to remain upon good terms with either party that might chance to have the upper hand. It was to the obvious interest of either party at the moment of election to be upon good terms with men who might well exercise so strong a vote-controlling power. On the 24th of October the New York "World" announced the formal adhesion of Mr. Whitney to the Tammany side; in an open letter he assured the Tammany candidate for the mayoralty of his support. His neutrality was plainly a neutrality between the two great standing parties, not between either standing party and a party of thorough-paced reform. His decision plainly had been taken because of the growing probability of the victory and of the thoroughgoingness of the party of reform. The newspapers were, many of them, of the opinion that by his decision the probability of that victory had been diminished or destroyed. The party managers of the Fusionists, many of them, held it for the time being their best hope that he might after all preserve a practical neutrality-that his support of Tammany might prove to be a formal and perfunctory support. Mr. Jerome, on the contrary, saw an opportunity to make good on his promises. He had spoken in public bitterly enough of the pernicious influence in public affairs of men like Mr. Devery and Mayor Van Wyck, of men whose acquaintance and personal friends

In a spirit of even justice, in the consummation of his experiment in fear lessness and veracity, he determined to deal in utter freedom of speech with the men of power and leading in Wall Street and in the brownstone districts no less than with the men of power and leading in the City Hall and in the slums; with Mr. Whitney and Senator Platt no less than with Mr. Devery and Mayor Van Wyck.

"Is it any wonder," said Mr. Jerome, "that Mr. Whitney should at last come forward publicly upon the side of Mr. Shepard, when the platform on which Mr. Low is running contains a plank in favor of taxation of public franchises?-not, indeed, of any anarchistic scheme of confiscation under pretext of taxation, but of a just system of taxation by which those deriving benefits from public franchises. should pay the people a fair price for benefits derived? Is it any wonder that Mr. Whitney and the interests he repre sents should be arrayed against the Fusion party, when they know that if they can defeat it they can buy their way as heretofore, and that if it cannot be defeated they cannot buy their way?"

"There has come into this campaign," he said to another audience that same evening," an element so significant that I intend to say no word in any public place to-night except on this new theme. In its importance it very far transcends the brutal ruffianism of Devery and the black mail levied by captains of police. It may seem to you far less picturesque and inter esting, it may evoke no cheers-but cheers are useless things. If you will take the remembrance of it home with you, it will gradually assume the same importance in your mind that it bears in mine.

"This new element is the support given publicly by William Whitney to Edward Shepard. The support given by Mr. Whitney is support given by the Metropolitan Street Railway Company; the intervention of the Metropolitan Street Railway Company is the intervention of the money power. It means that money will be spent at this election as money has been spent to buy our City Council and to buy our Legislature and to buy

results of this election are in so far endangered. So vast are the resources of Mr. Whitney and the Metropolitan Street Railway Company, so strong is money ruthlessly expended, that the newspapers are loud in comment on the value of the reinforcement brought to Tammany, and my campaign managers are pleading with me to say no word of Mr. Whitney or the Metropolitan Street Railway Company that may provoke them to direct their vast resources more heavily against our side. My campaign managers, for aught I know, are right in the matter of expediency. I never have known anything about electioneering, and I am not here to play a game I do not know. I am here to play the only game I know-the game of telling the truth. If by telling the truth I lose the fight-why, later, there will be another fight. But to me it seems that nothing could have served so well to show the real nature of the fight in which we are engaged as just this support given openly to Tammany by the Metropolitan. Street Railway Company. There There are many people in this city who love Tammany because they have been told that Tammany is the poor man's friend. There are not many people in this city who love the Metropolitan Street Railway Company; and this avowed support of Tammany by the Metropolitan Street Railway Company comes just in time to show the blindest who the friends of Tammany really are. The grafter never yet was working in the interest of the poor and honest man; he is certain to be working in the interest of the man that has the stuff. And that is why the fight for a dishonest administration never can be a people's fight. If anybody has been weak enough to fancy that there may be dishonest politicians whose dishonesty is for the people's profit, let him disabuse himself. The dishonest politician is certain to be working with the richest grafter whose spoils he has a chance to share; and in this country the richest grafters are the rich corporations that rob the people of their rights. The fight against the grafters now in office is a fight against the money power. Don't misunderstand me. I don't want your vote under false pretenses. Don't take me for an Anarchist or any other clap

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trap fellow trying to bid for votes. is no judge upon the bench and no private citizen who has stood more steadily than I, within the limits of such power as I could exercise, for the sanctity of property. I am not attacking corporations simply as corporations. I believe that in the present economic organization of society corporations are absolutely necessary to carry on the business of this or any other community; I believe that without them it would be impossible to bring together the great aggregations of capital that in the economic world are necessary to the winning of your bread and mine. I am not even attacking trusts. They may be expedient, they may be inexpedient; I believe that they are inevitable developments of the conditions of the modern economic world, and that we shall learn to manage them so that they shall serve the people's interests, as we have learned to manage other facts and forces of the material world. I do not believe in subjecting corporations to any form of extortion, legal or illegal. They have their rights; other people have theirs. But when their vast resources are expended to gain possession of our Legislatures and our courts, and even our ballot-boxes, then it is time to call a halt; then it is time to spring to the defense of our rights against the money power. You can call a halt by your ballots, if you will, the sixth of next November; you can never call a halt by criticism and comment. Criticism and comment take as little hold on corporations as on politicians. giving and the taking of bribes are criminal offenses; you can call a halt by voting for an equal and impartial enforcement of the law."

The

"The little looters!" he exclaimed at still another meeting that evening: "what are they to the octopus that holds the whole city in its grasp? I have at heart the suppression of vice in this city; I have at heart the suppression of crimes of violence in this city; I have at heart the suppression of public gambling in this city; but far more deeply than any or all of these, I have at heart the liberation of this city from the power that sys tematically corrupts its public service-corrupts the courts, corrupts the Legislature, corrupts the City Council, and seeks to keep in power against the people's will

such men as it has found it can corrupt." Evening after evening he reiterated the same charges, evening after evening the applause swelled louder. But on October 30th, without the smallest warning to any friend or counselor, he began the chief speech of the night with words which to the minds of all his friends spelled ruin. It was one thing to attack Mr. Whitney: Mr. Whitney was, when all was said, a Democrat, and a Democrat already formally enlisted on the side of the Democratic political machine. fusion was a fusion of the whole Republican party with a portion of the Democratic; the political machine on which the Fusionists relied was the Republican machine. The mainspring of the Republican machine, supposedly or actually, was Thomas Platt. "There is a man by the name of William Whitney," Mr. Jerome said that evening, as the beginning of his speech in Lyric Hall, "and there is a man by the name of Thomas Platt, and the man named William Whitney and one Ryan of evil State Trust fame met to-day; and they conferred; and when they had conferred they sent for Thomas Platt, and Thomas Platt went to that office. He is a man more accustomed to send for others than to go to them. He went up in the back elevator, and was taken to the private room of William Whitney, and then William Whitney and Thomas Ryan, who had been waiting in the office of the Morton Trust Company, went to the room where Thomas Platt was, and they conferred.

"Now, I have no use and never have had any use for Thomas Platt, any more than for Richard Croker or for William Whitney, and I tell you this to-night because it serves to show you how things stand, and because I believe that if the people of New York knew really how things stand, they would arm our hands at this election against corruption both Democratic and Republican.

"It may be that they conferred about the parallax of Jupiter or the dark side of the moon, but they didn't. It may be that Mr. Whitney talked with Mr. Platt about the about the Philippine Islands, but he

He talked, as I believe, with Mr. Platt about the District Attorneyship of the County of New York. Mr. Whitney's memory is not so short that it

cannot go back to the days, scarcely a year ago, of the State Trust Company, when a loan of $2,000,000 was made to D. F. Shea, an office-boy of Thomas Ryan, though that loan was forbidden by the State of New York, and was, in consequence, a criminal transaction.

"It is no new thing, the alliance between Tammany Hall grafters and Republican grafters or do you think that graft is a monopoly of Tammany Hall? Do you think the rule of Thomas Platt is any better than the rule of Richard Croker, except that the one may be compared to petty larceny and the other to grand larceny? I have had occasion to know something of the power of bosses in this city, and I have seen the fair fame of the city prostituted year after year by infa mous collusion between the persons who misrepresent the Republican party and the persons who misrepresent the Democratic party. It is no new thing, the alliance between the bosses upon either side and the alliance between those bosses and the money power. But do you realize what that alliance means? There are sincere men, and I am one of them, who believe the principles of the Democratic party essential to the welfare of the country; there are sincere and loyal men, and many of them, who believe the principles of the Republican party essential to the welfare of the country. Such men must fight it out together at the polls, and may be content to fight it out together loyally, with a true, square count. But in the meanwhile in a back room there sit in conference a little group of men who have control of the elections and decide the questions we contend about, with no regard to principles at all."

That speech in Lyric Hall was given under the auspices of a local Republican organization. The audience enjoyed it, but the faces on the platform went white with dismay at the first mention of Senator Platt. The chairman, who had said the prettiest words he could command a few minutes before and sat down smiling, looked as if he had just discovered that some one had been making a fool of him. He was a big man, with a big face that lent itself to angry expression; he had the aspect of a disappointed, savage bulldog, held back by a collar and chain from a g at his natural prey. The foolishest

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faces on the platform were those of Mr. Jerome's own party. They sought one another's eyes for a time in mute amazement. Finally they found speech-in whispers. "It looks as if I had seen a man commit suicide," said one; "he is either a martyr or a hero." Suicide! He has killed the whole ticket along with himself. Why didn't you stop him off?" This inquiry was addressed to the writer, because he had happened to be alone with Mr. Jerome in the carriage when he arrived at Lyric Hall. The notion of stopping him off from saying anything he had made up his mind to say, which would in any case have been amusing, was in this case the more so since he had not dropped a word of his intention to name Senator Platt. He had said only, as we neared our destination," Hodder, I am going to put the fat in the fire." I said that I was not surprised, that he had been doing nothing from the beginning of the campaign but put the fat in the fire. "It makes small difference," he answered, with an accent of brooding meditation that was by no means usual with him, "whether Low and I be elected; it is important only that some one have the pluck to tell the people the truth;" and he jumped out of the carriage.

There was nothing improbable or even unusual in the sort of understanding between political adversaries which Mr. Jerome was thus ascribing to Mr. Platt and Mr. Whitney: it was precisely because such compacts are become a commonplace of politics, and yet are unfamiliar to the public, that this one with overwhelming force seemed to him to point a moral and to symbolize a danger. It is between the rank and file of either party that there obtains in matters politic a warfare to the death. The leaders on either side-not the orators, but the true leaders, the men who govern the machine, the men who constitute the power behind the throne— are for the most part on amicable terms. The Republican machine is to all intents and purposes a trust; the Democratic machine is to all intents and purposes a trust; like other trusts, they pool. When the Republicans come into power, most offices, but by no means all, go to Republicans; when the Democrats come into power, most offices, but by no means all, are given to Democrats; the distribution