A Prayer For the Idle By Walter Rauschenbusch O GOD, we remember with pain and pity the thousands of our brothers and sisters who seek honest work and seek in vain. For though the unsatisfied wants of men are many, and though our land is wide and calls for labor, yet these thy sons and daughters have no place to labor, and are turned away in humiliation and despair when they seek it. O righteous God, we acknowledge our common guilt for the disorder of our industry, which thrusts even willing workers into the degradation of idleness and want, and teaches some to love the sloth which once they feared and hated. WE E REMEMBER also with sorrow and compassion the idle rich, who have vigor of body and mind and yet produce no useful thing. Forgive them for loading the burden of their support on the bent shoulders of the working world. Forgive them for wasting in refined excess what would feed the pale children of the poor. Forgive them for setting their splendor before the thirsty hearts of the young, luring them to theft or shame by the lust of eye and flesh. Forgive them for taking pride in their selfish lives and despising those by whose toil they live. Forgive them for appeasing their better self by pretended duties and injurious charities. We beseech thee to awaken them by the new voice of thy spirit that they may look up into the stern eyes of thy Christ and may be smitten with the blessed pangs of repentance. Grant them strength of soul to rise up like men from their shame and give a just return of labor for all they receive and enjoy. AND to our whole nation do thou grant wisdom to create a world in which none shall be forced to idle in want, and none shall be able to idle in luxury, but in which all shall know the health of wholesome work and the sweetness of well-earned rest. The Democratic Representative in Illinois who, according to the testimony of Representatives White, Link and Beckemeyer, paid $1,000 apiece for Lorimer votes. Senator Lorimer char acterizes Browne as an honorable, upright, God-fearing man A N ordinary American Legislature sat down in Springfield, Ill., January 19, 1909, to the task of electing a United States Senator for the seat to be refilled or vacated by Albert J. Hopkins March 4. It was known in advance that it would be difficult; it was feared that it might be dangerous, and its importance to the state politically needed no emphasizing. It was an ordinary American Legislature. That is partly an assumption, but it is so sustained by probabilities as to be acceptable as a fact. It may not square with the pious hopes of reputable citizens in other states, but well-informed observers of American political conditons will fear that it is only too true. May 26, 1909, this ordinary Legislature completed its task of electing a Senator by giving 108 votes-55 Republicans and 53 Democrats -to William Lorimer, then Congressman, defeating Mr. Hopkins, the choice of the Republican party in the primaries, and all other candidates, avowed or merely hopeful. Almost a year later the manuscript of a narrative by a member of the joint assembly which elected Mr. Lorimer was placed in the hands of State's Attorney John E. W. Wayman, of Cook County, by James Keeley, then managing editor, now general manager, of the Chicago Tribune. The activities of the prosecuting authorities in Cook and Sangamon counties and of the committee on priv ileges and election of the United States Senate since then have testified abundantly to the character of this story-the confession of a man who had been bribed—and to the results Keeley secured with it. To repeat: this was an ordinary American Legislature in composition, intelligence, standards of honesty and methods of operation. It had its proportion of lawyers and farmers, its seasoning of saloon-keepers and its sprinkling of doctors, bankers, business men, realestate agents, etc., its pro rata of pious men and of professional drunkards. A great many played poker and a few read the Bible-one, as was learned later, "from cover to cover." It was an ordinary American Legislature, and what it did was the ordinary legislative thing-except that there were two accidents. One was Representative Charles A. White. The other was James Keeley. There was also a third accident. White met Keeley. As a result, this plain ordinary session of a plain ordinary Legislature has been given the aspect of an extraordinary event in American. political life. It would be more reasonable to say that the Illinois assembly was caught with its guard down. It slipped on White. To give this Legislature credit, it did not expect a great deal financially out of the senatorial election. It hoped to do very well on general legislation and had many promising measures in the hatchery. Except to statesmen important enough to be concerned in COPYRIGHT, 1910, BY THE PHILLIPS PUBLISHING CO. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED promoter owned the governor and the Legislature of Illinois and the City Council of Chicago. He has represented the stock yards in Washington-not the people but the packers higher politics the deadlock which ensued was regarded as involving merely a waste of time. It was a pleasant surprise later when it became remunerative. Prior to January 19, 1909, many interest- and he understands commercialized poliing things happened in Illinois, and inasmuch as most of them led into the Legislature later they are important to this narrative. Principally they concerned three men, in addition to the people of the state of Illinois, the three being William Lorimer, then Congressman representing the Sixth Illinois District, Governor Charles S. Deneen and Albert J. Hopkins, then United States Senator. Mr. Lorimer now sits uneasy in his seat. It would be valuable to understand Mr. Lorimer, but that is impossible. It is easy to put a tag on him and assign him to a classification, but in the end it is not satisfactory. Some of his shrewder or more intelligent enemies are puzzled to know whether he is self-hypnotized or monstrously hypocritical. He is spotlessly moral socially. He is religious, but without particular ostentation. Sunday-school superintendents might-and sometimes do-point to his life as one to shed a peaceful and beneficent light over the young aspirations of their charges. He is benign of appearance and restrained of temper. He works partly with a saloon gang of politicians, but liquor does not touch his lips. Until he was betrayed into speaking harshly of Medill McCormick, of the Chicago Tribune, he had spoken gently of all men. He might send a squad of thick-necked, low-browed plug uglies out to beat an enemy's political head off, but he would breathe a benediction as they went. He could think all manner of gunpowder plots and preserve the appearance of an innocent country gentleman walking in a country lane by the village graveyard in holy meditation while the village church bells tolled the hour. He is the most amiable, carnation-bedecked Guy Fawkes known to politics in the Middle West. His friends would die for him in the last trench in the face of an overwhelming force of the enemy and his enemies never cease to fear him. He was a street-car conductor and he dragged his education out of the world. He is a great organizer and his political success started when he saw the possibility of applying scientific methods to politics in Chicago. That was in the Blaine campaign. He had been allied with public-utility grabs and public contracts ever since he became powerful in politics. He was associated with Charles T. Yerkes when that street-railway tics. He has a charming family. He is a good man. He is probably genuinely religious. He has never had a faint conception of public service, unless it be his deep waterway proposal, for which he has worked hard. That may or may not be untarnished. It has suspicious angles, but some of his enemies credit him with one public-spirited impulse. Charles S. Deneen is the second person of importance in the preliminaries. For the purposes of this narrative he may be dismissed with the statement that he applies the gray matter of a statesman to the methods of a machine politician and in spite of the former may never arise above the level of the latter. He is cold, unerring, intelligent, working out of sight in the basement. He has, however, what Mr. Lorimer has not-the sense of public service. He does work for the people. Albert J. Hopkins, of Aurora, was important and is not. If he ever had one thought which was not ninety-nine per cent. concerned with Albert J. Hopkins no one has yet discovered it. Mr. Lorimer, seeking to defeat Governor Deneen for renomination in 1908, became convinced that Mr. Hopkins, whom he had made Senator in 1903, had betrayed him, and vowed that the Aurora man, although the choice of the Republican party in the primaries, never again as a Senator would see Washington. It was at that moment that the plans for the unveiling of the statue of corruption in the Illinois Legislature were laid-all unwittingly. When the Assembly met in regular session in January it was filled with no other ambition than to continue its successful assaults against the strong boxes of the wealthy. It began in the House of Representatives with an unusual procedure which startled the state. Four years before Governor Deneen, then new in office, had made Edward D. Shurtleff Speaker. Shurtleff, an iron-nerved, pokerfaced little man, was popular and efficient. Two years later Deneen supported him for reëlection, but after he had the gavel in his hands for a second time he broke with the Governor. In 1909 they were bitter enemies. Shurtleff, a candidate for reëlection, had the backing of the inner organization which he had formed in the previous sessions. Deneen secured a majority of the Republican members, but not enough to make a majority of |