the ringleader, and which was engaged in various peculiar businesses
which will now be indicated.

The companies which these several henchmen had organized under previous
administrations, and for Mollenhauer, dealt in meat, building material,
lamp-posts, highway supplies, anything you will, which the city
departments or its institutions needed. A city contract once awarded was
irrevocable, but certain councilmen had to be fixed in advance and
it took money to do that. The company so organized need not actually
slaughter any cattle or mold lamp-posts. All it had to do was to
organize to do that, obtain a charter, secure a contract for supplying
such material to the city from the city council (which Strobik, Harmon,
and Wycroft would attend to), and then sublet this to some actual
beef-slaughterer or iron-founder, who would supply the material and
allow them to pocket their profit which in turn was divided or paid for
to Mollenhauer and Simpson in the form of political donations to
clubs or organizations. It was so easy and in a way so legitimate. The
particular beef-slaughterer or iron-founder thus favored could not hope
of his own ability thus to obtain a contract. Stener, or whoever was
in charge of the city treasury at the time, for his services in loaning
money at a low rate of interest to be used as surety for the proper
performance of contract, and to aid in some instances the beef-killer or
iron-founder to carry out his end, was to be allowed not only the one or
two per cent. which he might pocket (other treasurers had), but a fair
proportion of the profits. A complacent, confidential chief clerk who
was all right would be recommended to him. It did not concern Stener
that Strobik, Harmon, and Wycroft, acting for Mollenhauer, were
incidentally planning to use a little of the money loaned for purposes
quite outside those indicated. It was his business to loan it.

However, to be going on. Some time before he was even nominated, Stener
had learned from Strobik, who, by the way, was one of his sureties
as treasurer (which suretyship was against the law, as were those of
Councilmen Wycroft and Harmon, the law of Pennsylvania stipulating that
one political servant might not become surety for another), that those
who had brought about this nomination and election would by no means ask
him to do anything which was not perfectly legal, but that he must be
complacent and not stand in the way of big municipal perquisites n