Word: bribe
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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From his puritanized city the monk denounced Alexander VI as a usurper. Alexander at first tried to bribe him with a cardinal's hat. Savonarola replied: "No [red] hat will I have but that of a martyr reddened with my own blood." After he defied a papal excommunication, his political enemies, assisted by the Pope's political friends, stormed San Marco, had him tortured and executed...
...Virginia state trooper accused Bandleader Cab Calloway, oldtime King of Hi-De-Ho, of driving 65 m.p.h. and then offering a $10 bribe to be permitted to swing along merrily to a nearby racetrack...
Ever since Halley's comet flickered across the television screens last year, the U.S. has been discussing organized graft and crime. Still, the U.S. may not quite understand how organized crime can become. Subjected to the American genius for systematic administration, the casual bribe and the brutal threat are sublimated (and made more dangerous) by standardization of services, fixing of prices, replacement of piecework by a regular wage, centralization of authority and cost accountancy. A case in point is that of James J. Moran...
Under the Moran plan, an ironclad schedule of graft rates was instituted-$10 to $35, depending on the size of an installation. Most of the city's 1,000-odd contractors were thus able to predict the bribe necessary to get a burner or tank certified for operation, and the more venal among them were able to pass the cost along to the customer in their early estimates...
...protect the honor of the fire department, no inspector was ever allowed to certify an unsafe burner or to wink at a leaky tank; contractors were forced to comply with the law before a bribe was accepted. If a contractor refused to pay, nobody threatened him; the collector simply waited for cold weather to jar him into paying...