The Use Of Money At Elections

The Owosso Press says : The practice of using money to carry elections has grown enormously in modern times, to such proportions in fact, that it is really alarming. Party leaders in planning political campaigns base all their calculations upon the amount of money their candidates can put into their party funds, -and men who can command capital either of their own, or belonging to friends, are about the only persons who can obtain nominations. And funds from the pockets of the people are raised to repay the investment with profit. Take for example, the office of State Treasurer. The office pays only one thousand dollars, yet Gen. McCreery, of Flint, is willing to throw up a Federal office which he now holds, with a salary of tfee thousand dollars, to accept the office of State Treasurer with a salaay of only one thousand, and he and kis friends will contribute enormous suma to carry the election. How can such rnvestments be afforded ! In answering this questipn we have to state that the party holding power in this State during the last twenty years having piled up taxes year after year, have got the State treasury in such a flourishing condition (?) that the Treasurer constantly holds a surplus of money drawn frorn the pockets of the people amounting to not less than one million dollars. The balance in the treasury has averaged nearly that sum during the last five or six years. The laws require the funds to be deposited where they will pay four per cent. Now with a constant demand for money among the peoplo, a demand all the more urgent because they are heavily taxed, is anybody so unsophisticated as to believe that the surplus funds of the State treasury are loaned for barely four per cent ? The truth probably is that the balance in the treasury constantly yields eight to ten per cent. It certainly must yield at least seven per cent. and he will assume this as the interest. This is fhree per cent. more than the treasurer need account for. One million at three per cent. gives $30,000 evory year to compénsate the Treasurer and his friends for their money spent to carry the election. With the promise of the use of this balance in the State treasury, the friends of Gen. McCreery can aíford to spend money freely to carry the election.