Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 5.djvu/44

20 condition of our party organizations. More good has already in that way been done than many party men are willing to admit. At any rate, mean trickery to secure a little partisan advantage is probably the last thing which men of that way of thinking would be capable of.

To return to the matter immediately before us, we all know that the character, the good name, of the American people has suffered much by the corrupt practices going on in our political life. I have myself, while abroad, had occasion to defend that character, and tried to do so to the best of my ability. But the charges which have been current since the last Presidential election have evidently made that defense much more difficult. I want, for the honor of this Republic, to see these charges, if they can be, wholly or at least in part disproved and should have been glad to aid in such disproval. But no candid observer will deny that the use of money in elections, as it has of late years developed itself, has really become a great evil—probably the greatest danger now threatening the vitality of our republican institutions; and I think it the first duty of good citizens to combat that evil on whatever side it may appear. I believe one of the effective ways to combat it would be to make obligatory the public accounting of all election expenses in detail. Now, the promise held out in your behalf by Mr. Straus in his published letter looked to me like a step in the right direction. He represented you as a man who, concerning his money transactions in the last campaign, had nothing to conceal, and who was rather anxious to have this fact ascertained and made known through one not his party associate. I thought this very creditable to you; but if, in believing it, and in acting upon that belief, I made a mistake, it was a mistake which, it seems to me, you might have taken rather as a compliment than as an offense or as a part of a Democratic plot to injure you.