You Have Been Served

I found Lincoln Steffens' collection of articles, bound under the title "The Shame Of The Cities", in the Saint Louis Public Library. It's hidden away amidst the 7-story shelves, pneumatic tubes and glass floors of the stacks.
The story reminded me of the more recent scam to get the tax-payers of Saint Louis to fund a baseball stadium but this turn-of-the-last-century setting is more suited to the song. Either way, not much changes in Saint Louis politics.

It was still the era of Stagger Lee when the Suburban Railway scandal broke. Joseph Folk was elected circuit attorney of Saint Louis in 1900. During his campaign, he promised to fight corruption and those in power backed his appointment. In early 1903, he used an article by newspaper reporter Red Galvin to begin an invesitgation of the Suburban Railway Company. The embezzlement scheme involved in this business began to unravel and expose other corrupt operations. Folk prosecuted the very business leaders and law-makers that had encouraged his anti-corruption promises.

Joseph W. Folk (1869–1923) was elected Governor of Missouri for one term after his weeding of corrupt machine politics in the river city. Like John P. Altgeld, the Illinois politician, Folk also ruined his government career by doing the right thing. In Altgeld's case, he pardoned the three surviving Haymarket martyrs and had them released from jail.



You Have Been Served

no one on the farm, they've all gone to town
no one in the factory, the factory closed down
if you want a job, it's the service industry
all kinds of service with looting on the side
just another day in this shameful town,
we stand around and watch the whole rotten deal go down
they meet in south Saint Louis to pool their wealth,
enough to fix all the elections
a new standard of a honest man is one that stays bought once you pay him

corruption to the breaking point
Red Galvin take the lid off, look at this mess inside
the circuit attorney is hired to fight the criminals,
the easiest ones to find float right up to the top
a man named Folk stands alone, stand down they say,
let the status quo continue, let things go their way
selling out the people, that's bribery
the oldest tradition in our democracy

lick up and spit down, lick up and spit down,
now you have been served, you have been served
set the bribe-givers against the bribe-takers
take the whole thing down because bribery is treason