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Excerpt from The Montreal Graft Inquiry, Its Funny Side and Its Serious Side: Why Were the Big Crooks Safe? A Plain Statement by a Plain Writer
The purely administrative deeds were found to be fully as bad as suspected. It cam-e out [that the Proulx Brothers, together with a corporal's guard of cousins on both the father's and the mother's side, had a sort of monopoly of the works for the Police Committee. Of course, the Chairman knew nothing of it. Of course, he had never shared with his enterprising kin. Those things, however, having occurred during his term of office, the people could draw their own conclusions and, rightly or wrongly, they did it.
Of the same Embalme'd Beef Brand was the en forcement of the law shown to be. Guilty or not, a. Liquor-dealer brought to judgment would go to his alder man, or to some alderman, and, thru him, get the Chief of Police to Withdraw the charge This system, the inauguration of which had coincided with the coming into power of the present chairman, sometimes gave startling results. Some saloon-keepers were prosecuted four times in six months, and released each time without: the knowledge 'of the judge, upon payment of the costs a paltry six dollars Over fifty cases were thus abandoned -several of them for the benefit of ill farmed publicans, whose houses, according to the written reports of the police themselves, were nothing short of brothels. Of course, the good Alderman did it all for charity's sake; Some of the culprits were poor. Others had creditors who must suffer from a strict application of the law. In all cases, the guilty saloonist had promised to behave better, and it did Onot matter how often this same promise had been made, and broken, before. Yet, the chairman of the Police Committee was shown to have got election funds at the rate of $25 to $100 per head from most of these people. Yet, one Cavanagh produced a cheque for $25 which he said he had paid to the chairman for the settlement of a suit, and swore having subsequently spent eight hundred dollars for Ald. Proulx in an election, And so forth.
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