Then for the first time the cry of shame went up, but not from the leaders of the Republican party. Their energies were given to protect the robbers, to stifle investigation, and to slander the men fearless enough to expose the hideous conspiracy.
Here we were brought face to face with the fact that the Republican party had abandoned its principles, had abandoned truth and justice—even humanity itself—and in the future would depend on dollars and cents for its strength. Its political morality strongly resembled the Democratic party as it was twenty years ago, when slavery was its Political Fetish—when it had a Jew banker at one end of it and a prize fighter at the other.
Again we were brought face to face with the fact that the Republican party and its professed leaders had reached that very high standard of modern civilization, when a bank for the savings of the wages of the poor could be made part of a system of robbery, the robbers being encouraged and recognized by the administration and society. To be even more explicit, it was the first time in the history of felony that the workmen and workwomen, the scrubbers and washers, the orphans and widows of the poorest and most ignorant classes in the city of Washington, were unwittingly made to cash obligations issued by an organized gang of thieves and plunderers.
May I ask the reader to go back with me to the time Mr. John R. Elvans made his statement. Finding there was no other way of stopping the robbery or exposing the crime but through the press, I had recourse to that. My first articles, as is very well known, appeared in the _Savannah Morning News_. The _New York Sun_, on being assured of the correctness of my statements, afterwards came to the rescue and did good service in making the hideous crime public. The appearance of these articles created great excitement in Washington, as well they might. Denials came thick and fast, the robbers and their friends—and they were numerous and strong—asserted that the bank was in a perfectly sound condition, that its management was above suspicion. Of course the author of the articles was denounced as a libeler, and threatened with vengeance. The officers of the bank, without distinction of color or previous condition of servitude, were declared to be Republicans in good standing, and very high-toned gentlemen. I had heard something very similar to this before.