Cleveland Plain Dealer

CURE FOR OFFICIAL CORRUPTION

Justice Ingraham of New York, in charging the Lexow grand jury, said that "to be the holder of public office seems today to be almost synonymous with being corrupt." This may sound harsh and unguarded but it comes as the deliberate utterance of an able judge and is true to the core. Public opinion may be wrong, but that is public opinion. Municipal officials, especially, not only find in loose public sentiment a license to corruption but find that a catering to the worse element is really necessary to re-election.

Perhaps Cleveland is no better and no worse in this respect than the average American city. Yet it has a city council which, through narrow and petty partisan jealousy, refuses to permit important recommendations of the mayor and the directors of the various departments to be carried out, and it has a police court that in its leniency in remitting fines and bonds has not only encouraged law breaking and enervated the police force but become a financial burden to the city in failing to make its own expenses.

These faults are due to the public themselves. The people not only tolerate this condition but indorse it by re-electing the officials or promoting them to higher offices.

The citizens of Cleveland must wake up to a realization of their most serious and solemn duty to themselves. Reform is sadly needed here and the revolution to result in any practical good must be non-partisan. Candidates and measures must be made to stand upon their own merits.

When the honest citizens of this city enter into this spirit and act upon it at the polls they will hold the power in their own hands. The bum element will no longer control elections, leaving to the honest but indifferent and divided majority only the dry husks of party prejudice. Officials will then learn that honesty is the winning policy.