it was rapidly
developing in the more capitalist and mercantile sections of the Union.

The first effect of this was an appalling increase of political
corruption. During Grant's second Presidency an amazing number of very
flagrant scandals were brought to light, of which the most notorious
were the Erie Railway scandal, in which the rising Republican
Congressional leader, Blaine, was implicated, and the Missouri Whisky
Ring, by which the President himself was not unbesmirched. The cry for
clean government became general, and had much to do with the election of
a Democratic House of Representatives in 1874 and the return by a true
majority vote--thought defeated by a trick--of a Democratic President in
1876. Though the issue was somewhat overshadowed in 1880, when Garfield
was returned mainly on the tariff issue--to be assassinated later by a
disappointed place-hunter named Guiteau and succeeded by Arthur--it
revived in full force in 1884 when the Republican candidate was James G.
Blaine.

Blaine was personally typical of the degeneration of the Republican
Party after the close of the Civil War. He had plenty of brains, was a
clever speaker and a cleverer intriguer. Principles he had none. Of
course he had in his youth "waved the bloody shirt" vigorously enough,
was even one of the last to wave it, but at the same time he had
throughout his political life stood in with the great capitalist and
financial interests of the North-East--and that not a little to his
personal profit. The exposure of one politico-financial transaction of
his--the Erie Railway affair--had cost him the Republican nomination in
1876, in spite of Ingersoll's amazing piece of rhetoric delivered on his
behalf, wherein the celebrated Secularist orator declared that "like an
armed warrior, like a plumed knight, James G. Blaine strode down the
floor of Congress and flung his shining lance, full and fair"--at those
miscreants who objected to politicians using their public status for
private profit. By 1884 it was hoped that the scandal had blown over and
was forgotten.

Fortunately, however, the traditions of the country were democratic.
Democracy is no preservative against incidental corruption; you will
have that wherever politics are a profession. But it is a very real
preservative against the secrecy in which, in oligarchical countries
like our own, such scandals can generally be buried. The Erie scandal
met Blaine on every side. One of the most