by the English Parliament to investigate parliamentary and municipal elections, in a draft report prepared by the chairman said:
It is difficult to arrive at the truth in the matter of the allegation of intimidation of workmen by masters, of tenants by landlords, of tradesmen by customers, and of workingmen by each other. That such intimidation is not practiced in a mode capable of legal proof is evident from the rarity of cases when a return has been set aside on this ground. But that it is practiced in some slightly disguised forms, and in a manner difficult of proof before a legal tribunal, cannot be doubted.[1]
Mr. Dowse, the attorney-general for Ireland, said:
He referred to the intimidation exercised by landlords on tenants, a form of which existed in England and Scotland, as well as in Ireland, by employers on the employed, by customers on shopkeepers. He had known instances of intimidation by a shopkeeper on a customer, by a lawyer on a client, by a doctor on a patient, and by a patient on a doctor. He had known half a congregation leave their parson and set up another place of worship on account of his vote, thus depriving him of a considerable part of his income.[2]
Mr. Terrel, of Exeter, in his testimony said “that at the Tory committee room at Exeter, it was a common question in going over the list of voters, ‘Who can influence this man? and Who can lay the screw on that one?’”[3]
Probably intimidation was not as widespread in the United States as in England prior to the adoption of the Australian ballot act: but that it was extensively practiced, particularly by employers, cannot be doubted. According to a report of a committee of the Forty-sixth Congress,[4] men were frequently marched or carried to the polls in their employers’ carriages. They were then supplied with ballots, and frequently compelled to hold their hands up with their ballots in them so they could easily be watched until the ballots were dropped into the box. Many labor men were afraid to vote and remained away from the polls. Others who voted against their employers’ wishes frequently lost their jobs. If the employee lived in a factory town, he probably lived in a tenement owned by the company, and possibly his wife and children worked in the mill. If he voted against the wishes of the mill-owners, he and his family were thrown out of the mill, out of the tenement, and
