The Elko Independent

Congress and the Cadetships.

Cadetships at $500 are cheap. That is the price they have been selling at in the Radical market at Washington. The carpet-baggers from the Southern States bit at this little bait with singular avidity; four out of the five arraigned, hailing from that region.

We have some compassion for these beggarly carpet-baggers. They went into the trade retailing their patriotism in very small packages, after their associates on the floor of Congress had been doing a wholesale business in that line for ten years. Why couldn't these transitory legislators be let alone! they were only stealing a few hundreds where thousands and hundreds of thousands had been taken, while every one's fingers were on their lips.

The trouble was not on account of the act, so much, as it was in being caught at it. That loyal advertisement in the New York Herald offering places at West Point and Annapolis at certain figures, with as little shame as though they were selling a sheep in the market; that advertisement overdid the business. "Assume a virtue, if you have it not!" Congress had to clear its skirts, and these old hucksters in public virtue, whose days and nights for years have been devoted to despoiling their country's treasury, immediately pitched upon these poor, friendless, worthless, representatives of the South, and made them the scape-goats of Congressional infamy. Where these miserable, threadbare carriers of carpet sacks have seen a ten-cent shinplaster, their accusers have swindled the people and the Government out of thousands. Every one who has ever passed three months in Washington during the session of Congress knows that there is rarely a bill of any kind, appropriating money, passing that body that is not "oiled" by greenbacks. This is notorious.

It is a well known fact, also, that many of the leading Senators have had their special friends on the outside, and if any measure is sought to be passed these special friends must be "seen." When votes are wanted for confirmation, Senators have a way of signifying their little weakness, and "mum" is the word.

It is notorious that many Senators have entered the Senate chamber too poor to pay their board bills, and in two or three years have been able to count their hundreds of thousands, and to live in princely style.

This thing has been going on for a decade. Congress need not attempt to wipe its shoes on this "poor white trash" which the negroes have sent to Washington to do their dirty work. The lordly representatives of national banks, the fee'd attorneys of railroads, whisky ring speculators, and distorted tariff advocates, can well afford to feed these haggard and hungry carpet-baggers, and scalawags with a few crumbs from the national table, after they have so liberally stuffed their own stomachs with the fat of the land.