In 1905 Delaware, a Methodist pastor startled a church convention with accusations that political bribery had reached even into the pews.
The Reverend William Cashmore, pastor of the Frederica Methodist Episcopal Church, was speaking on temperance when he claimed that election bribes had become so common in Delaware that even class leaders, local preachers, and ordained clergymen had been guilty of taking them.
His most striking claim involved a crossed telephone line. According to Cashmore, he overheard a conversation between a man in Dover and a brewer in Philadelphia, discussing a $3,000 payment to defeat a local option bill in the state senate. The brewer’s answer, he said, was that the bill must be stopped, and the money would be provided.
Political Bribery in Church, Says Pastor
HARRINGTON, Delaware. — The Reverend William Cashmore, pastor of the Frederica Methodist Episcopal Church, this morning aroused the Dover District Epworth League convention when, in a discourse on temperance, he declared that bribery in Delaware had grown to such proportions that class leaders, local preachers, and ordained clergymen were guilty of taking election bribes.
In speaking of the effort made at the last session of the Delaware Legislature to pass a local option law, the Rev. Mr. Cashmore said that while holding a conversation over the telephone from Wilmington to his home in Frederica the lines became crossed, and he heard a conversation between a man in Dover and a brewer in Philadelphia.
When the statement was made that the local option bill had been passed in the lower house of the Legislature, but that for $3,000 is could be defeated in the senate, the reply of the brewer was that it must be defeated, and that the money would be forthcoming.
Source: The Washington Times. Washington, D.C. October 21, 1905.
