Los Angeles Herald

NEW JERSEY BOODLERS,

HOW THE READING COMBINE WAS LEGALIZED,

Three Million Dollars Spent in Buying the Votes of Legislators—A Bribe of $25,000 Refused by One of the Senators.

Startling Disclosures of Fraud.

New York, March 20.—Last Friday the Herald charged the use of a corruption fund of at least $3,000,000, raised by interested capitalists and stock jobbers to bring about the passage of the bill legalizing the Reading railroad combine in New Jersey. Today the Herald returns to the subject and states that more than half of the hideous secret has been laid bare. "There was bribery," it adds, and enormous bribery at that. Proof of it is furnished on the word of State Senator Maurice Alexander Rogers of Camden county, whose word will be accepted unquestionably from one end of the state to the other."

Senator Rogers of New Jersey, in an interview at Camden, is quoted as saying that at 10:30 a. m. of the day the bill passed he was offered and refused $10,000 for his vote for the bill. The agent returned and offered more than $25,000, though Rogers does not state the exact figures. Senator Rogers was asked to expose the man who tried to bribe him. He replied: "People may blame me for withholding the name, but I would be causing greater pain to my feelings if I told it than any public praise could assuage. I sat there in the senate and saw the bill pass, knowing that many votes were bought. I suspected bribery before, but then I knew it. I was almost stunned and did not know what to do. The bill came up and Senator Gardner in a speech showed clearly that it was a most outrageous piece of legislation, forcing on the people a monopoly of a necessary of life, and providing for the arbitrary confiscation of the stock of shareholders who objected. Not a word was said on the other side. They simply voted it through and that was the end of it."