Mary Roberts Rinehart Quotes
McKnight is gradually taking over the criminal end of the business.
Rinehart, Mary Roberts. The Man in Lower Ten. Bobbs-Merrill, 1909, p. 1.
This quotation is typical of the anti-government intense feeling, paranoia, and hyperbole of the early 21st century. While a minority of the American population identify with the Tea Party, the Center for a Stateless Society, and other anti-government groups. However, the orthodox members of both of the major political parties tended to avoid publicly criticizing these individuals and organizations lest they end up with an opponent in their next primary election which did not succeed in the majority of cases, but in all cases, it cost the politician a great deal of money, time, and energy to run a primary campaign which often weakens them for the general election that follows.
That is exactly what the IRS did, and in 1931, Capone was imprisoned for tax evasion.
Mary Roberts Rinehart was an American writer, often called the American Agatha Christie. Rinehart published her first mystery novel The Circular Staircase in 1908, which introduced the "had I but known" narrative style. Rinehart is also considered the source of "the butler did it" plot device in her novel The Door (1930), although the exact phrase does not appear in her work.
