investigation among men who would talk frankly to me, and discovered that a most iniquitous condition existed. Massachusetts senators and representatives were not only bought and sold as sausages or fish are in the markets, but there existed a regular quotation schedule for their votes. Many of the prominent lawyers of the State were traffickers in legislation, and earned large fees engineering the repeal of old laws and the passage of new ones. Agents of corporations nominated candidates for office, and paid the expenses of their election in return for votes for a favorite measure and promises to "do business." The Legislature was organized on the same basis; its executive officers were chosen because of their subservience to certain corporation leaders; committees were rigged to do given things and prevent other things from being done. Above all, I learned that the chance of a citizen of Massachusetts obtaining a charter from the Legislature of his State, unless he had money to put up for it, was about as good as a hobo's of securing a diamond and ruby studded crown at Tiffany's by explaining that he wanted it. In fact, the citizen's request would be regarded by senators and representatives very much as Tiffany's would regard the hobo's--as a joke first, then as an impertinence. Right here I desire to say to my readers and especially to all those hypocritical and ignorant people who, imagining any strong statement must express a strong prejudice and not a fact, will cry, "He overstates! He exaggerates!" that in years after when I had full opportunity to study at close range the Massachusetts Legislature, its workings and those who worked it, all the impressions I had received at this time were absolutely confirmed. I do not hesitate to state, then, that: _The Massachusetts Legislature is bought and sold as are sausages and fish at the markets and wharves. That the largest, wealthiest, and most prominent corporations in New England, whose affairs are conducted by our most representative citizens, habitually corrupt the Massachusetts Legislature, and the man of wealth connected with such corporations who would enter protest against the iniquity would be looked on as a "class anarchist." I will go further and state that if in New England a man of the type of Folk, of Missouri, can be found who, after giving over six months to turning up the legislative and Boston municipal sod of the past ten years, does not expose to the world a condition of rottenness more rotten than was ever before exhibited in any community in the civilized world, it will be because he has been suffocated by the stench of what he exhumes._