Never were the forces of money and commercial and industrial power so
bewildered and so uncertain of the way to turn as they are now. Graft,
to their best interests, is still covertly a necessity to them, but
covert graft never was so hard to keep covert, now that briber and
the bribed are the common quarry of the law. The time was when the
rich man who bought political power to his uses was unnamed, standing
apart. The grafter legislator was the cause and the consequence.
Beginning and ending with the corrupt official whose official place
was grafted upon corruption, the official became immune from the
consequences.
"Grafting in this state never has cost the taxpayer a dollar," was one
of the slogans of a machine government in its attempts to perpetuate
that machine for the purposes of King Graft and his court.
But this false philosophy slowly was undermined. Not only was it found
that graft did cost money to the state, but it became a certainty that
it was costing something even more valuable than money. Graft became
the one object of the political seeker after office. The impersonal
graft-giver was a hanger-on at lawmaking centers, and the political
graft-seeker was insisting upon election or appointment to the
machine positions.