How Members of Congress Are Bribed

From the opening

If a persistent intermeddler without proper warrant in Government affairs, an unscrupulous dealer in threats and promises amongst public men, a constant menace to sworn servants of the people in their offices of trust, a tempter of the corrupt and a terror to the timid who are delegated to power a remorseless enemy to wholesome legislation, a constant friend to conspirators against the common welfare for private gain--if such a compound of dangerous and insolent qualities merged in one personality, active, vigilant, unblushing, be a Lobbyist--then Collis P. Huntington is a Lobbyist at the doors of Congress, in its corridors and in its councils, at Washington.

He is the spirit incarnate of Monopoly in its most aggressive form. Among the intrenched powers which have sapped the vitality and are a menace to the existence of our form of republican government, he is strong with their strength, dangerous with their power, perilous with the insolence of their courtesies, the blandishment of their open or covert threats.

For nearly thirty years he has engendered broadcast political corruption in order to enrich himself and his associate railroad magnates at the public cost.

The declared representative now of those who have been thus far successful conspirators against the general Treasury and ruthless oppressors of every vital interest of defenceless California, with resonant voice and open hand he is clearly visible upon parade, demanding attention from the elected servants of all the people, and easily dwarfing the lessor lobby by the splendor of his equipment.

The English Parliament would relegate such an intruder to the street; the French Deputies point to his credentials with infinite scorn; Italian statesmen would shrink from a perusal of his record, and the Spanish Cortes decline to listen to any plea that men who are at one and the same time known robbers and declared beggars have blended and vested rights as both such to millions of public money.

A short sample. Read the whole book

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