I am just in receipt of your letter and enclosure from Mr. Moon. I wrote you on yesterday that he had been appointed acting postmaster. His appointment should reach him within a few days.

I note what you say about young Parsons doing some work in the eastern end of the district. My advice would be to just let them do what they can and keep in close touch with your friends in your county and the other counties of which you are referee. We have the advantage for I will keep you posted about any and all vacancies and will refer them to you. You will have to work on Doctor Smith some more as I wrote you. He is now getting awfully anxious about the post office. We can do nothing now toward making this appointment unless the present postmaster can be removed on charges.

If they will get up some charges and send them in we will go to work on it. I wish you would write Dr. Smith and explain that we are doing everything we can along these lines. You might say to him that we have won out on every thing we have undertaken with one exception and will win on that sooner or later.

Don't worry about the action of the people in the western end of the district. Just let them do what they can. Remember that we are your friend and will stay with you. Let me hear from you all along.

With best wishes,

Your friend, (Signed) L. B. H.

Your letter enclosing letter written you from Charlottesville by Bascom received.

This is what I want you to do. Don't send any more money to Richmond until I see you. Neither do I want you to tell Bascom or Mr. Crupper either anything about what has been done until I see you. Please follow this fully and when I explain why I ask this you will understand and agree with me.

Another thing I want you to do for me is this. I have been asked to contribute to the campaign fund, but was told to get what I give from my friends that we had been helping in the way of appointments. If you will arrange this for me I will appreciate very much. Say something like $200.00. You can say to our friends that this contribution is for me so there will be no trouble about it. You know how to handle the matter. Let me know upon receipt of this if I may depend upon it.

Your letter relative the Phenix Office received this morning and the matter will be handled as you desire. If you have not already done so don't send the balance of his contribution to Richmond.

The post master at Henry in Franklin County has died. The Department is asking for the name of some one to appoint acting. The office pays about $600.00 per year. I wish you would get in touch with Beverly Davis or some one and let us have name as soon as possible. I would have the party send in a little contribution. Say $25.00 or $35.00. Sincerely yours, L. B. H. Secretary.

From a letter of July 2, 1921, Howard to Powell:

July 2, 1921. I thank I have arranged for the appointment of Mrs. Angel at Boon Mill without an examination though I prefer that you keep this in confidence.

"Get men that will help us in a financial way," were Howard's instructions to Powell, on July 16, 1921:

I certainly did enjoy being with you at the Convention and I appreciate the many courtesies extended to me while there. I am going to depend on you to work out the Henry County appointments. If our friend, Dr. Smith does not fall in line as he should, I think you ought to connect with some one else in that county, and still I think the Doctor will be alright if you will have a long talk with him.

Of course you know that it is necessary in making these appointments to get men in that will help us in a financial way, and also I want you to look after the situation in Campbell County.

I will send you copies of letters that I write to Mr. Morgan, the County Chairman, so you can keep in touch with the situation. Let me hear from you all along. With best wishes, I am

To collect campaign funds, or wipe out a deficit, in that way is far more deadly to democracy than if the money went directly and solely into the hands of individual patronage venders. It means that the dominant party cares nothing about the public service, that it would betray its sacred trust by prostituting public positions to partisan purposes. Probable Extent of the Graft

Judged by the canceled checks, and other evidence, plus reports of "sales," proof of which only a thorough investigation could disclose, we are of the opinion that this selling of offices in the one district under consideration would yield an annual income to the politicians involved of probably $10,000. That is a guess, but, we think, a good one.

There are rumors of payments as high as $1,000 for a single postoffice appointment.

Assuming, for the moment, that a single average district would yield a "political" income of $10,000 a year, then the selling of offices throughout the south would figure out as follows:

Sincerely yours,

C. B. SLEMP.

On February 8, 1921, Slemp sent this to Powell:

February 8, 1921.

MR. B. R. POWELL,

Total

$1,040,000

Gretna, Virginia.

MY DEAR MR. POWELL;

I enclose you copy of letter received from Mr. Hays. There is a deficit of a small amount on hand over matters. So we ought to raise $10,000.00 at least. I am sure I do not know what to do about this, except that we should do the best we can. Each District would be chargeable with $833.00, but as we will fail in some district, I think we should try to get $1,000.00 from each district, the over plus, if any to go to the State Chairman for State expenses. If any one has sent in money in response to the letter of Mr. Hays sent out on December, we should know about it and have it deducted. Please let me hear from you. I will be responsible for the 9th District and am ready anytime. With regards, I am

Sincerely yours,

The G. O. P. Deficit

C. B. SLEMP.

These last few letters refer to a phase of the situation that is partisan rather than personal. There was a deficit in the treasury of the Republican National Committee. It was evidently handled in Virginia by the same SlempPowell combination that looked after offices. Presumably the money came from the same sources-appointees who were thus paying political obligations.

With respect to a part of the fund collected from office seekers and office holders, Mr. Slemp may be able to say that the money went into the coffers of the Republican party, through its chairman, who was then at the head of the Postoffice Department, and in a position to give "value received" in a distribution of spoils.

Congressman Harrison Starts It

It was Congressman Harrison, of Virginia, who first disclosed the evidence of office selling from which we have quoted. In the House, on December 15th, he read into the Record some of the letters here reproduced.

C. Bascom Slemp was present and offered no denial, even when Mr. Harrison spoke as follows:

"The people of the country do not altogether understand Virginia Republican politics. It is a pure matter of patronage and a question of who feeds off patronage. I have been hearing all over my district about the sale of patronage. Constantly reports have come to me that offices were sold for what money there was in it. Let me repeat, I do not believe Republicans of the north realize southern Republicanism, and I do not believe they would indorse southern Republican methods.

"I am going to read some letters. A man whom I do not know and for whom I do not vouch-I have not any idea who he is; he claims, as I understood him, and I do not even vouch for that he complains that he bought an office and it was given to somebody else because that somebody else had given more money for it, and he put the correspondence in my hands. Now, the head of this whole patronage business in Virginia is the distinguished Member from the ninth district, Mr. Slemp. He is the disburser of all patronage. He is the man who has to give his indorsement to the applicant, not only in my own state but, also as I understand, in other states. Here are canceled checks. They are indorsed, some of them, by Mr. Slemp, some by his secretary, all for the indorsement of applicants to office."

All this unerringly reveals Slemp in his political character. Because, among all the millions in America, Coolidge deliberately and knowingly selected Slemp to be his "right-hand man," it becomes a revelation of Coolidge.

Instead of recognizing and rewarding and embracing Slempianism, a real President would have been militantly concerned with its reproval and punishment.

A real President would have said to Congress and to the country:

"This business of prostituting the public service, of bought-and-paid-for delegates, throughout the Republicanism of the South, has got to stop. Political

corruption is degradingly and devastatingly unAmerican. It is a cancer, eating away at the very vitals of representative government."

Instead, and notwithstanding its meaning to America, Coolidge made Slemp Secretary to the President.

Slemp occupies that crucial position today.

A

Clean the Augean Stables

HOUSECLEANING in public affairs should be the outstanding issue in this campaign. Its corollary should be: Revive the investigations; let exposures continue until every last bit of graft, including all the war graft, is revealed.

The Searchlight said in March:

The people are perplexed by the national situation. This perplexity is not surprising. There are some aspects explainable by no presumption save that of a degree and extent of criminality in official circles so astounding as to be utterly incredible. And the wholesale lying that is going on by those who would suppress investigation is the best organized and most reprehensible propaganda in the history of the Republic. Too much of the incredible is true.

It is difficult to discover the truth and deadly dangerous to discuss it, but the evidence points plainly to these conclusions:

That money madness is shriveling the soul of the nation; That the prevailing power of politics has sunk to the lowest depths of depravity and perversion;

That corruption is coursing the veins of our public life; That the guiltless in high places are leagued with the criminals in a conspiracy of silence;

That the hands of justice are palsied by her own infamy; That back of it all is the master ally of corruptionists, the modern Hercules of propaganda, with every roll of the press and every radio wave seeking subtly and insidiously to spread the impression that the exposures should stop.

The dissembling power of propaganda-that is what makes one tremble for the future of America-the puny helplessness of truth. No other hour has been so critical. The supreme crisis is here. The fight is on against the deadliest, most venomous enemy of the Republic-to purge our public life of the black plague of corruption and exploitation. Nothing else matters, so long as there exists the necessity for such a purging. All other problems are temporarily unimportant.

Graft, so gigantic and general as to stagger the imagination, has been rampant. Like the vilest, most virulent poison, it has permeated public affairs.

God's laws are inexorably righteous and justly exacting. Unless this acute and malignant national sickness is cured, quickly and thoroughly, the Republic will wither and die. Yet, in this tragic hour, with the very fate of democracy at stake, we find practically the whole press of the country united in an effort to chloroform the public conscience, to stifle intelligence, to twist and turn popular opinion toward the belief that these investigations are only "political," that it is the duty of Congress to cease its "muck raking," and turn to legislation.

Both press and politicians are doing this.

They do not say: Stop the graft. Instead they insinuate: Stop the exposures of graft.

The thing to stop is vicious propaganda. Let the investigations go on. Nothing else is so fundamentally vital, so imperatively essential, to the perpetuity of our sacred American institutions.

Otherwise, the Republic will die, as any foully diseased organism deserves to die.

The downfall of Rome was due to official venality. The French revolution developed out of a cesspool of social and political and church corruption.

Our citizenship may now ignore the lessons of all history, but there can be no evasion of the consequences, if these modern American prostitutions are permitted to continue.

The Pro-Coolidge Propaganda

T THE Murray Crane-Bascom Slemp kind of politics, Coolidge has shown a certain abilityPerhaps adaptability would be more apt, because he has not so much initiated as applied such methods. In all other fields he is inexpressibly dull.

Newspaper propaganda has given him whatever reputation he possesses.

Writing with astounding plainness of this "reportorial conspira" to "praise and protect" Coolidge, to build and sin him in a false position, Frank R. Kent, a nev 'n who has seen it all from the inside, now. o state the truth, says:

"Without it (the pro

nda) he would long ago have become a sort of sad political joke. Look at the facts for a moment. Here was the dullest and most ignored and obscure Vice-President in history, suddenly pitchforked into the presidency. As Governor of Massachusetts and as Vice-President he had been a laughing stock for those who watched him function-a thoroughly commonplace, colorless person with a neat little one cylinder intellect and a thoroughly precinct mind. A docile product of the Murray Crane machine, there was nothing unusual in the fact that he became Governor. That is the sort of thing that happens in many States. It is not necessarily a mark of ability, force or character in Massachusetts, anymore than anywhere else. Those who know the facts and there are a great many-know that, in the matter of the Boston police strike, he had to be forced to act and did not deserve the credit he got. He got it, solely and simply, because of this 'praise and protect' reportorial conspiracy that I have been discussing.

"The newspaper men gave it to him because that was the way the thing 'framed up' and because it was the instinctive thing for reporters to protect public officials. It would have been hard to have told the exact truth about Mr. Coolidge in that strike business, and it would have taken a good deal of newspaper courage. It was not told, but there were few politicians and few newspaper reporters who did not know what it was that Mr. Coolidge would have done nothing at all if he had not been pushed into it. In the three years he was Vice-President he made neither friends nor foes. Socially and politically, he was generally considered hopeless. He was as near nothing as any man we have ever had in that office, and it is no secret that had Mr. Harding lived the plan was not to renominate him. That single fact is the most revealing index of the intellectual inanimation and forcelessness of the man. It would have been a humiliating and unprecedented thing to have passed him over, but it was seriously contemplated-in fact, definitely discussed on the Harding trip to Alaska last summer."

With reference to his weekly meetings with Washington correspondents, Mr. Kent writes:

"Newspaper men who have regularly attended these Coolidge conferences from the start will tell you they are the most uninspiring, uninteresting, deadly dull affairs of the kind ever known in Washington, that it is extremely hard to get anything out of them worth writing, that you have to strain yourself to do it. In the year that they have been held, twice every week, no one who has been in attendance can recall a single word from Mr. Coolidge that sparkled or glowed or indicated any force, feeling, grasp, or spirit. It has been literally amazing that a man could be so long, consistently and so unqualifiedly dull. But that is not the picture the country gets. That cannot be written. It is not news. While Congress lasted and before he was nominated, Mr. Coolidge profited enormously by this system of correspondents' conferences and indirect quotation. Since his nomination the protection continues. It will not fail him through the campaign. It is his biggest asset-this tendency of the newspaper writer who comes into personal contact to portray the President as of heroic size. There have been some Presidents whom some newspaper men really thought heroic-but not this President."

There you have the explanation of "the Coolidge myth."