CORRUPTION: Dog Eat Dog

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So, last week, David C. Stephenson talked. He talked to William H. Remy, Prosecuting Attorney of Marion County (Indianapolis). "There is a vacant chair next to mine in the chair factory. I am lonely and I am yearning for some of my playmates," said Mr. Stephenson. Exactly what else Mr. Stephenson said was not made public, but he must have said a great deal. The conference, indeed, lasted for four hours. Garbled and indirect were the rumors of what occurred. It was said that he told how, for a consideration, he had ordered bills passed or killed in the Indiana legislature, how he had bought municipal elections in return for pre-election promises, how he financed the gubernatorial campaign of Governor Ed. Jackson. One feature of this financing was the payment of $50 a head to various ministers for the privilege of having the then Candidate Jackson speak in their churches. Mr. Stephenson also is said to have discussed Samuel Insull* of Chicago and his relation to Governor Jackson's campaign, although it is not known how much was added to the popular supposition that Mr. Insull contributed $19,000 to the Jackson fund in the expectation that a broad-minded Public Service Commission would later be appointed. Mr. Stephenson also told how one Jack Maroney, political worker for U. S. Senator James E. Watson of Indiana, had last autumn called on him to pass the time of day. It was at that time that Senator Watson rose wrathfully from a sick bed and bellowed at Senator James A. Reed of Missouri, who was trying to investigate Indiana elections and was counting on Mr. Stephenson as Exhibit A. And Mr. Stephenson also mentioned the administration of indicted Mayor John L. Duvall of Indianapolis whom the people of Indianapolis recently rebuffed by abolishing even the office he holds.† Taking one thing with another, Mr. Stephenson appeared to have run along the scale of Indiana politics from deep basso to high treble and to have omitted hardly any of the intervening keys. Most important, most mysterious of his revelations concerned a certain "little black box" which was supposed to contain documents supporting his exposures. Following the conference, Prosecutor Remy left for South Bend, Ind., presumably in search of the hidden box. Meanwhile Governor Jackson also left Indianapolis bound for Kansas where he planned to pay his father-in-law a long visit.

Thus the Indiana explosion. Since it detonated privately, it was difficult to list the dead, the injured. But Mr. Stephenson appeared confident that the state's output of cane chairs soon would materially increase and those to whom he talked reported that he has a most extraordinary memory for facts, for figures, for dates, for names.