Word: venal
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1920-1929
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...shoe-string." The decisive vote is the "floating" vote which can be polled only by distributing, or allowing to be distributed, money for the precinct organizers. The money does not actually "buy votes." It is paid to venal "runners" or "workers" on Election Day to fetch their relatives to vote. Estimating that there are 150,000 precincts in the U. S., each averaging 400 voters of whom perhaps two-thirds vote, Mr. Kent reckons that that party wins which has the money to employ ten "runners" per precinct at $5 or $10 for the day. Each "runner" fetches about...
...Mellon. At Tulsa, his special text was Oil, his chief target the Tariff. At Topeka he fell upon President Coolidge and snarled: "Without hesitation I declare that the stratum of the Republican party which has for the past eight years controlled the government is the most corrupt, the most venal and the most vicious body of men by which this nation has ever been afflicted."* At Denver it was "the snoopers and spies . . . like the lice of Egypt"-an anti-Prohibition speech (Denver being wet). The League of Nations took a lashing, too, as the Angel of Vengeance passed...
Probably there are certain evil persons,--no friends of the present Administration,--who derive a soul-satisfying pleasure from reading carefully every shameful account of corruption, of damaging testimony, of venal politics. Possibly there is a righteous feeling among the publishers that this governmental scandal should have the widest publicity to impress its iniquity upon the public more emphatically. But for the great majority, who are merely sickened by the reappearance of the "sordid detail" after another, who have no axe to grind, and who are well aware that this is not the first instance of corruption in American politics...
Will it, like so many other industries, develop its vested interests and its propaganda? Will junk barons buy up newspapers to preach the cause of international peace? Will second-hand dynamo lobbies try to put over disarmament jokers on Parliaments and Congresses? Will venal correspondents and news agencies flood the press of the world with fakes about peace banquets in Tokio, international meetings in London, interracial resolutions of friendship in Rome, all provocative of unity among the nations and designed to build up the scraping industry? More power to them! -New York Evening Post...