How did the propertied classes meet this extension of suffrage throughout the United States? CORRUPTION AT THE POLLS. A systematic corruption of the voters was now begun. The policy of bribing certain legislators to vote for bank, railroad, insurance company and other charters was extended to reach down into ward politics, and to corrupt the voters at the springs of power. With a part of the money made in the frauds of trade or from exactions for land, the propertied interests, operating at first by personal entry into politics and then through the petty politicians of the day, packed caucuses and primaries and bought votes at the polls. This was equally true of both city and rural communities. In many of the rural sections the morals of the people were exceedingly low, despite their church-going habits. The cities contained, as they always do contain, a certain quota of men, products of the industrial system, men of the slums and alleyways, so far gone in destitution or liquor that they no longer had manhood or principle. Along came the election funds of the traders, landholders and bankers to corrupt these men still further by the buying of their votes and the inciting of them to commit the crime of repeating at the polls. Exalted society and the slums began to work together; the money of the one purchased the votes of the other. Year after year this corruption fund increased until in the fall of 1837 the money raised in New York City by the bankers alone amounted to $60,000. Although this sum was meager compared to the enormous corruption funds which were employed in subsequent years, it was a sum which, at that time, could do great execution. Ignorant immigrants were persuaded by offerings of money to vote this way or that and to repeat their votes. Presently the time came when batches of convicts were brought from the prisons to do repeating, and overawe the polls in many precincts.[138] As for that class of voters who could not be bribed and who voted according to their conceptions of the issues involved, they were influenced in many ways:--by the partisan arguments of newspapers and of political speech-makers. These agencies of influencing the body politic were indirectly controlled by the propertied interests in one form or another. A virtual censorship was exercised by wealth; if a newspaper dared advocate any issue not approved by the vested interests, it at once felt the resentment of that class in the withdrawal of advertisements and of those privileges which banks could use or abuse with such ruinous effect. POLITICAL SUBSERVIENCY.