Another powerful reinforcement of the railroad lobby is not unfrequently a subsidized press and its correspondents. The party organs at the capital are especially selected to defend as sound measures, either from a partisan or non-partisan standpoint, legislation of questionable propriety desired by the railroads. When such measures are advocated by party organs, partisan members, either from fear or prejudice, are apt to "fall into line," and then to rely upon these organs to defend their action. Editors, reporters and correspondents are even retained as active lobbyists and give the railroad managers' cause the benefit of their prestige. To such an extent has the abuse of the press been carried that a considerable number of its unworthy representatives look upon railroad subsidies as legitimate perquisites which they will exact through blackmailing and other means of compulsion if they are not offered. A case may be cited here to illustrate their mode of operation, as well as the ethics of railroad lobbies. During one of the sessions of the Iowa legislature a newspaper correspondent came in possession of some information which reflected severely on the railroad lobby. He made his information the subject of a spicy article and showed it to a friend who stood close to the gentleman chiefly implicated, with the remark that nothing but a hundred dollar bill would prevent the transmission of the article by the evening mail to the paper which he represented. Before sundown the stipulated price for the correspondent's silence was paid, and an enemy was turned into a friend.