The Scandal Deepens And Broadens

With each passing day the postoffice scandal deepens. Revelations are coming now thick and fast. Ex-Superinendent of Rural Delivery Machen has been very promptly indicted by a grand jury and it is said that his crookedness in office will necessitate a radical overhauling of the rural delivery routes of the country. He is charged with laying out routes any where where a congressman asked for one regardless of conditions. Routes are said to have been established on which the receipts were not more than three or four dollars a month. Many such will have to be taken up.

It appears that congressmen were parties to this thing and urged the establishment of routes in sections where there was do demand whatever for the expense. Their pull with Machen was sufficient to induce him to wholly neglect his proper obligations to the public it would appear. Machen seems also to have bad a good understanding with the manufacturers of mail boxes and it is said received a graft from these.

In fact the ramifications of the scandal are so various that it seems that it must have been known to those higher up in the government service long ago. The scandal has been bruing for some time but Postmaster General Payne refused to believe that anything was wrong. There appears good reason for the belief that Payne only entered upon the investigation after Senator Lodge had nosed out various matters and brought them to the attention of the president. In other words that the postmaster general entered very reluctantly upon the investigation.

Machen seems to have been peculiarly close to Hanna, Perry Heath, Elkins and Payne and they appear not to have taken kindly to the interference of Senator Lodge. But the matter has gone so far now that it will probably be quite impossible to whitewash the whole gang.

It is not beyond belief that the closeness of Senator Hanna to Machen, Tyner, Perry Heath, Neely and Rathbone, et al., may have had something to do with his submission in Ohio. He may have seen the coming storm and sensed the danger to himself in appearing in any degree in opposition to the president. He may have felt that his closeness to the rascals now being brought to book might cause his name to be brought into unpleasant notoriety. Be this as it may the lightning appears to be striking most in those states where the anti-Roosevelt sentiment has been supposed to be greatest.

There seems to be a remarkable delay in the prosecution of the Tyner case. Papers were abstracted from the safe in Mr. Tyner's office without warrant of law, taken to the Tyner residence and some or all of them ultimately returned, but no one seems to know what papers were taken and whether they were all returned or not. Certain it is that the papers were taken without right or warrant and yet no one is in process of being dealt with as the offense demands. All these things lend probability to the suspicion that there may be bigger game involved. The scandal is one which deeply interests the public.