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ar gone in destitution or liquor that they no longer had manhood or principle. Along came the election funds of the traders, landholders and bankers to corrupt these men still further by the buying of their votes and the inciting of them to commit the crime of repeating at the polls. Exalted society and the slums began to work together; the money of the one purchased the votes of the other. Year after year this corruption fund increased until in the fall of 1837 the money raised in New York City by the bankers alone amounted to $60,000. Although this sum was meager compared to the enormous corruption funds which were employed in subsequent years, it was a sum which, at that time, could do great execution. Ignorant immigrants were persuaded by offerings of money to vote this way or that and to repeat their votes. Presently the time came when batches of convicts were brought from the prisons to do repeating, and overawe the polls in many precincts.[138] As for that class of voters who could not be bribed and who voted according to their conceptions of the issues involved, they were influenced in many ways:--by the partisan arguments of newspapers and of political speech-makers. These agencies of influencing the body politic were indirectly controlled by the propertied interests in one form or another. A virtual censorship was exercised by wealth; if a newspaper dared advocate any issue not approved by the vested interests, it at once felt the resentment of that class in the withdrawal of advertisements and of those privileges which banks could use or abuse with such ruinous effect. POLITICAL SUBSERVIENCY. Finally, both of the powerful political parties were under the domination of wealth; not, to be sure, openly so, but insidiously. Differences of issue there assuredly were, but these issues did not in any way affect the basic structure of society, or threaten the overthrow of any of the fundamental privileges held by the rich. The political campaigns, except that later contest which decided the eventual fate of chattel slavery, were, in actuality, sham battles. Never were the masses so enthusiastic since the campaign of 1800 when Jefferson was elected, as they were in 1832 when they sided with President Jackson in his fight against the United States Bank. They considered this contest as one between the people, on the one side, and, on the other, the monied aristocracy of the country. The United States Bank was eff
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