In consequence of these manipulations, when election day comes around, the poorer party is found with a so-called “yellow dog” ticket in the field—that is to say, a ticket composed of unfit and unknown men, clearly inferior to the pliant respectabilities who have been placed in nomination by the richer party. It sometimes happens that even this political trick fails to assure success. Either the better faction of the opposing party wins, or, notwithstanding the inferiority of the ticket named, it may promise to receive a majority of the votes cast. In this exigency the managers of the party which is fully supplied with the sinews of war do not hesitate at direct fraud. That is to say, they expend large sums of money in hiring election officials to betray their trusts at the risk of going to jail. One method adopted, where the law provides an official ballot, is to get from the officials having charge of the ballots one or more to be marked for the voter by heelers outside of the polling-room. This furnishes a sure method of bribery, for the venal voter, after depositing the ballot thus prepared for him, returns an unmarked ballot to the briber, as a guarantee of good faith, to be marked by him for the use of the next person bought. In this way one or more endless chains of purchased votes may be run all day, through the connivance of some election officer. This was done in Pawtucket, R. I., and at other places in that state, on the eighth of last November. But as the number of venal voters in a polling precinct is limited, so there is a limit to the effect attainable by giving out to heelers the official ballots designed for use in the voting booth only. What more, then, can be done in the way of modern chicanery and criminality? Election officers may be bought, and are bought, to defraud their fellow-citizens in a variety of ways. For instance, there is a very considerable percentage of illiterate voters in most states, many of whom desire to give their suffrage to the candidates of one of the poorer parties. But the richest party has paid the election officials, who assist the illiterate voters, to mark all such ballots for its candidates. Evidence exists that this was done systematically at the recent Presidential and state election in the city of Providence, R. I., a sufficient number of voters thus being deceived to turn the scale in the filling of one or more important offices. Inasmuch as there is a limit to the number of illiterate voters, even that base fraud, added to direct bribery, may not effect the desired reversal of the people’s will. But the moneyed party has other resources.