Of shoeboxes, Illinois politics, Paul Powell, Gov. Joel Aldrich Matteson (1853-57) and some modest reforms proposed by state Sen. Daniel Biss, D-Skokie

Several years ago when each state got to design its own quarter, I wanted Illinois' to feature a shoebox. I was reminded of that today by a well-produced video titled "THE ROAD BACK: Culture of Corruption," state Sen. Daniel Biss, D-Skokie. I first saw it on my Facebook feed, but it's available on Biss' website at this address:

https://roadbackillinois.com/an-innocent-trip-to-the-dry-cleaner-35c33b8fda38#.57czl8hdm

(The video is in a June 29 blog post titled "An Innocent Trip to the Dry Cleaner," in which Biss discusses some of the differences -- and occasionally the very close similarities -- between bribery and constituent services. It's nuanced and clearly written, and well worth reading, as the video is well worth watching.)

At any rate, Biss taught math at the University of Chicago and he knows how to hold an audience. The video outlines practical reforms, starting with voter registration and consolidating the welter of special earmarked funds in the state budget, and it does so in an engaging, even entertaining manner. Biss sounds like he must have been good with undergrads at the U of C.

Which is where the shoeboxes come in.

Shoeboxes and Illinois politics, they just go together. And Biss milked the connection for all it's worth.

Everyone knows, or feels like they ought to remember, the story about the shoeboxes stuffed with $800,000 in cash that turned up in Secretary of State Paul Powell's Springfield hotel room after his death in 1970. No one knew how it got there, and Paul Powell's shoebox got to be kind of an Illinois political icon.

Which is why I wanted a shoebox on the state quarter.

Biss' contribution to my knowledge was to begin with a tale of the chicanery that went with the bond issue for the Illinois & Michigan Canal in the 1830s, and a scandal that arose when Gov. Joel Aldrich Matteson, governor from 1853 to 1857, was caught with as much as $200,000 in I&M Canal scrip -- a kind of banknote -- that had somehow been removed from a shoebox in the basement of the old State Capitol in Springfield. A grand jury investigation followed, but Matteson made restitution, no one was indicted and no one ever found out exactly what happened to the canal scrip.

This kind of stuff can be deadly, except to historians and Illinois political junkies, but Biss got my attention.

I'd never heard of Matteson before. But here's some information I tracked down:

• Claire Suddath "A Brief History of Illinois Corruption," Time magazine website Thursday, Dec. 11, 2008 at http://content.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1865681,00.html.

  Suddath says:

  Reach as far back into Illinois history as you like and your hands will likely come out dirty. Blagojevich is the sixth Illinois governor to be subjected to arrest or indictment — seventh if you count Joel Aldrich Matteson (governor from 1853-1857), who tried to cash $200,000 of stolen government scrip he "found" in a shoebox. Matteson pulled a "how-did-that-get-there?" excuse and escaped indictment by promising to pay it back. (Oddly, this isn't Illinois's only shoebox-full-of-money scandal; after former secretary of state Paul Powell's death in 1970, a search of his home revealed shoeboxes full of hundreds of thousands of dollars in checks made out to him by unsuspecting Illinois residents who thought they were paying license plate registration fees).

• See also James William Putnam, The Illinois and Michigan Canal: A Study in Economic History, Chicago: U of C Press, 1918. Chicago's Historical Society Collection, 10: 88 Google Books.

• John M. Lamb. “The Great Canal Scrip Fraud,” in the December 1977 issue of The Magazine of Illinois 16.9: 57-60 at https://www.lewisu.edu/imcanal/JohnLamb/section_6.pdf.