CHAPTER VIII.

The Pay of These Barnacles.

The politician lives on campaign funds and offices. War opened a vast field for transaction in offices, expansion will provide enormous campaign funds. Every appointment to office secures all the friends and relatives of the appointee as workers for the politician or administration conferring the plum. The Spanish war rained plums in torrents and the heavens are not yet dry. The selection of incompetents from civil life to fill war offices for political reasons has been a supreme scandal, not only in itself as a bribe from politicians to civilians to dance around their bloody bonfire, but because it caused that cruel slaughter of American young men in the politicianmade grave yards called camps of San Francisco and the South. Through Alger and Corbin, McKinley conducted a wholesale business of appointing incompetents. Under galling criticism he acknowledged his wrong-doing by a curious act, but did not repent. While Congress was in session he was obliged to send the names of his favorites to the senate for confirmation before they could receive commissions, but "soon after the close of the session he isued an order that the clerical force at the White House should not divulge the names of future appointees to the army from civil life." After this through inadvertency of a clerk the War Department allowed one list to leak out to the Associated Press and it was published by the evening papers of the country, but the excited Depart

ment secured its withholding from the morning papers.* Thus do presidents and secretaries engaged in the great work of re-electing themselves sneak and scheme.

The number of civilians who received staff appointments up till August 22, '98, tells much. Assistant Adjutant-Generals, ranking as Major, 8; the same ranking as Captain, 35; Quartermaster ranked as LieutenantColonel, 1; the same, with rank of Major, 1; Chief Quartermasters, with rank of Major, 6; Assistant Quartermasters, ranking as Captain, 70; Chief Commissaries of Subsistence, ranking Major, 14; Commissaries of Subsistence, ranking Major, 5; the same, with rank of Captain, 73. This list is only partial, but many of those included are brothers and sons of present Washington politicians.

The result was death to the wretched men who took congress seriously in its declaration that the war was for humanity and not greed. How many of those who enlisted to make Cuba 'free and independent' would have done so had the bed-rock object of the war, to forcibly obtain trading grounds for our millionaires, been confessed? Who can ever forgive that Congress? Innocent common citizens took the humanity gag seriously and went out to spend the summer rotting to death on foul and meagre rations within sight of home, under the care of the inefficient officers appointed to re-elect Congress and McKinley. This is one item of the pay given these scoundrels by the American people for immersing them in a criminal war.

When the war broke loose the volunteers from Southern California went up to camp in San Francisco on the bleak ocean front and found no preparation of food, bedding or clothing for them. The sickness began at once. On May 13, "There is not a man in the 584 raw recruits of the artillery battalion who has not a cold or a sore *Washington correspondent of N. Y. Evening Post, Sept. 17. 1898. †The same.

throat. Some of them are threatened with pneumonia.”* But a Major said: "The men are having a hard time of it, but it is what they must expect. One blanket and the floor for bed and bedding is not extraordinary in war times, and though many have colds and sore throats, they will recover and be all the hardier."

It did not prove so, many of the strongest of them died. One with a powerful physique, who spent the summer there and finally lay at death's door with typhoid, said to me after recovery, 'I was so weakened by bad and scanty food that I could not resist the disease conditions all about me. Hard drill with improper nourishment drained away our strength.' This soldier's regiment did not go to the Philippines, but its colonel made efforts to collect his men for that field. 'If he comes for me I will shoot him before I will go with him,' remarked this young man. However, sore throats, pneumonia, fever, were what the soldiers of humanity had to expect; each dead soldier was equal to a dozen campaign speeches to re-elect the Congressmen who caused the war.

In December Miss Schaefer, a Red Cross nurse, returned from Manila and reported:

Scores of the soldier boys are dying in the hospitals in Manila just for want of proper nourishment. They say the government allows 60 cents a day for each patient. I could save dozens of lives on 5 cents a day. Oh, the utter woe of the hospitals, the helplessness of them. Men as bright and noble as God ever made, giving up to death, hoping for it, seeking it, taking poison, doing anything that will end the despair that comes upon them. No wonder there are six or seven funerals a day. No wonder the dead-house is never empty. Think of an attendant going through a ward with a pail of beef broth, ladling out to the fifty or sixty patients indiscriminately a tin cup full of it. In the whole pail full there was not enough nourishment for one, even if it were made of the best material. But what it really was made of I shut my eyes and refuse to imagine. In a whole ward there is not more than one nurse with experience, and for helpers only one or two awkward boys who, perhaps, never saw a sick room before.†

Censor of Mails Otis will probably say this is a made up story and charge the nurse with being a traitor, or

*Special to Los Angeles Herald.

†Associated Press Dispatch from Honolulu, Dec. 7, '98.

accomplice of Aguinaldo. Why should it be made up? No one had to make up stories of worse things about Chickamauga, Santiago or Montauk Point. It is what soldiers who fight to establish the liberty of the president to destroy savage races for political effect have to expect. They will be all the hardier for it. But those who doubt such stories need only turn again to the president's appointments. The Chief Commissary of Subsistence has much to do with the health of soldiers. A representative of the N. Y. Evening Post interviewed one of these dignitaries bound for Manila on the U. S. Flagship China. "Have you had any experience in the Subsistence Department?" he was asked. "None at all," he frankly answered. "I suppose you have an experienced clerk, then?" "No," he replied, "I was unable to find a clerk with any experience in the Department. This being the type of men McKinley sent out to take care of the American army why should anyone suppose that the hospitals would not be managed as Miss Schaefer described?

The same writer noted another little presidential joke on the same ship. There was a sutler, with all his goods. "Sutlers have been abolished by law, and yet this man, brother of a Representative in Congress, succeeded in shoving himself on board and getting transportation for himself, his clerk, and his goods free of charge, while the United States commissary was obliged to leave part of its supplies on the dock in San Francisco for lack of room. It is needless to say that the sutler arranged a store on the lower deck, where he is gradually getting from the soldiers such money as the latter have not given to the Chinese crew for Chinese whisky, a grewsome mixture. The commissary is confined to the hold. The authorities on board are either indifferent or ignorant or helpless to remedy these abuses. The commissary was established to take the place of sutlers, and give the men articles at cost prices."

*Letter from Manila Harbor, July 17, '98.

The next election will show the relation of campaign funds to expansion. A campaign fund is a bribe. Those whom it elects are pledged to execute the will of those who contribute it. The Republican party learned in the struggle of ninety-six how to carry elections with millions. in face of the axiom that it is the party of millionaires. The millions are of course furnished by the millionaires. In that election no greater matter was at stake than the money standard, and yet they dished out extravagantly. Next time the whole millionaire policy will be on trial and we shall expect an amount of money thrown into the conflict such as humanity never invested in an election before. Expansion in its tersest definition is, (1) The Survival of millionaires, (2) The Expansion of millionaires. Assuming this here and assuming that millionaires know it, what limit is there to the money they will lay down for campaign expenses?

As

Imperial Platt's system of electing men to serve him in the New York State legislature will be applied to the country. He furnishes the nominees of his party in the various districts of the State with money for election expenses, and when they are elected they are his men. owner of the Legislature he negotiates with the New York millionaires who need legislation, agreeing to deliver it for stipulated contributions to the campaign fund. This Imperial Platt controls alone. He pays election bills and whatever he pleases out of it. The millionaires understand the system and send their checks like little men. The method is easily applied to national politics. Congressional aspirants needing help are furnished with it out of the national fund on condition of sustaining the national policy of the party chiefs who supply it. That policy so far as the Republican party is concerned is whatever the millionaires ask, and as they now ask expansion beyond everything else, expansion will be the Republican slogan in 1900. Congress has only two elements, those who are millionaires and those who are not. Those