Page:A History of the Australian Ballot System in the United States.djvu/23

12 by the English Parliament to investigate parliamentary and municipal elections, in a draft report prepared by the chairman said:

Mr. Dowse, the attorney-general for Ireland, said:

Mr. Terrel, of Exeter, in his testimony said “that at the Tory committee room at Exeter, it was a common question in going over the list of voters, ‘Who can influence this man? and Who can lay the screw on that one?’”

Probably intimidation was not as widespread in the United States as in England prior to the adoption of the Australian ballot act: but that it was extensively practiced, particularly by employers, cannot be doubted. According to a report of a committee of the Forty-sixth Congress, men were frequently marched or carried to the polls in their employers’ carriages. They were then supplied with ballots, and frequently compelled to hold their hands up with their ballots in them so they could easily be watched until the ballots were dropped into the box. Many labor men were afraid to vote and remained away from the polls. Others who voted against their employers’ wishes frequently lost their jobs. If the employee lived in a factory town, he probably lived in a tenement owned by the company, and possibly his wife and children worked in the mill. If he voted against the wishes of the mill-owners, he and his family were thrown out of the mill, out of the tenement, and