H.L. Mencken (1880–1956). The American Language. 1921.
Page 390
| He give the Legislature the air, and sent the members home every time they stood up to him and give him a call-down. |
| When a Legislature was busted up he wouldn’t allow no new one to be elected, so that there wasn’t nobody left to run things, but anybody could walk in and do whatever they pleased. |
| He tried to scare people outen moving into these States, and made it so hard for a wop or one of them poor kikes to get his papers that he would rather stay home and not try it, and then, when he come in, he wouldn’t let him have no land, and so he either went home again or never come. |
| He monkeyed with the courts, and didn’t hire enough judges to do the work, and so a person had to wait so long for his case to come up that he got sick of waiting, and went home, and so never got what was coming to him. |
| He got the judges under his thumb by turning them out when they done anything he didn’t like, or holding up their salaries, so that they had to cough up or not get no money. |
| He made a lot of new jobs, and give them to loafers that nobody knowed nothing about, and the poor people had to pay the bill, whether they wanted to or not. |
| Without no war going on, he kept an army loafing around the country, no matter how much people kicked about it. |
| He let the army run things to suit theirself and never paid no attention whatsoever to nobody which didn’t wear no uniform. |
| He let grafters run loose, from God knows where, and give them the say in everything, and let them put over such things as the following: |
| Making poor people board and lodge a lot of soldiers they ain’t got no use for, and don’t want to see loafing around. |
| When the soldiers kill a man, framing it up so that they would get off. |
| Interfering with business. |
| Making us pay taxes without asking us whether we thought the things we had to pay taxes for was something that was worth paying taxes for or not. |