Almost a month after the congress had adjourned a committee of the state senate of Illinois, investigating the charges, was informed through the editor of _The Chicago Tribune_ that Clarence S. Funk of the International Harvester Company had been approached immediately after the election of Lorimer by Edward Hines of the Lumber Trust with the information that it had required $100,000 to elect Lorimer, and the request that Funk’s company contribute $10,000 toward the fund. Immediately afterward Senator Lafollette introduced a resolution in the United States senate providing for a new investigation. Thus was inaugurated one of the most exhaustive and significant investigations ever held by the United States senate, which was to delve deep into the most sinister influences that assail the integrity of free institutions, the debasing effect of bi-partisan combinations of politicians for personal gain, the corrupting influence of powerful financial elements upon the public life of the nation, the all-too frequent susceptibility of law makers to the blandishments of the bribe giver. For 102 days the committee was to listen to the unraveling of one of the most startling tales of political debauchery ever told. Before it was to file an incongruous company of witnesses--leaders of the United States senate, such as Aldrich and Penrose, potential political leaders like Roger A. Sullivan, governors and former governors, the millionaire and the beggar, the briber and the bribed, journalists and bartenders, detectives and street car conductors, drunkards and reformers, the high and low, the rich and poor, the good and bad. It was to become a participant in one of the most tremendous political dramas ever enacted in America--comedy treading on the heels of tragedy, to be followed by burlesque and vaudeville. It was to have a hundred million people, the perpetuity of whose institutions was at stake, as an audience, and they were to await with the keenest interest the moral of the play.