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Who really said it

Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods

Written by H. L. Mencken 1880–1956 · American journalist and cultural critic
Verified In copyright

Mencken wrote it in an essay called “Sham Battle” in The Evening Sun of Baltimore on 26 October 1936, in the sentence “government is a broker in pillage, and every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.” The essay was later reprinted in the 1956 collection A Carnival of Buncombe. Unusually for a line pinned on Mencken, the popular short form is not a paraphrase — it is his own clause, lifted intact.

Last verified 10 Aug 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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“Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods” H. L. Mencken, "Sham Battle," The Evening Sun (Baltimore), 26 October 1936; reprinted in A Carnival of Buncombe (Johns Hopkins Press, 1956). Via Quotle.info · Verbatim: “In other words, government is a broker in pillage, and every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.”

Can you use it?

Still under copyright (rights held by The estate of H. L. Mencken; A Carnival of Buncombe (1956) published by the Johns Hopkins Press). A short, credited quote is generally fine for talks, teaching, and internal decks; for commercial, published, or large-scale reuse, get permission.

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In context

Evoking the world of H. L. Mencken — American journalist, satirist and cultural critic. Theme: "Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

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Provenance

The 1936 essay

Essay
Sham Battle
First published
The Evening Sun, Baltimore — 26 October 1936
Reprinted
A Carnival of Buncombe, edited by Malcolm Moos (Johns Hopkins Press, Baltimore, 1956)
Popular wording
A genuine excerpt of Mencken's sentence, not a later paraphrase

In other words, government is a broker in pillage, and every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods. The closing sentence of the passage

Mencken builds to it rather than opening with it. The argument running ahead of this sentence, paraphrased: the state is a gang of men no better than anyone else, whose only real talent is getting and holding office; they win it by finding groups who want something they cannot have and promising to supply it; nine times in ten the promise is worthless, and the tenth time it is honoured by looting one group to pay another. Quote Investigator transcribes the full passage ↗.

Quote Investigator: Every Election Is a Sort of Advance Auction Sale of Stolen Goods

How we verified this

In copyright

The line comes from a newspaper essay first published on 26 October 1936 and reprinted in a 1956 book — both well after the 1931 cut-off, so this text is treated as in copyright in the United States, not public domain. Mencken's earlier books (the Prejudices series, In Defense of Women, The American Language) are freely available, but this sentence is not from any of them.

Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.

Fact-check

What actually goes wrong with this one

Mencken is one of the internet's great fake-quote magnets, so the surprise here is that the line is genuinely his. What travels wrongly is the wording — and, since the mid-2000s, the name attached to it.

Ambrose Bierce Misattributed

By 2006 the saying was being credited to Bierce; Quote Investigator quotes a collection of essays and poetry, Beyond Bougie by Stephen Earley Jordan II, introducing it as Bierce speaking “in his cynical, yet honest ways.” QI reports finding no substantive evidence that Bierce said or wrote it ↗. The pull is obvious — Bierce wrote The Devil’s Dictionary, and the line reads like one of its entries — but the earliest documented instance is Mencken's, in 1936.

“nothing more than an advanced auction of stolen goods” Mis-worded

The most-circulated variant is not Mencken's phrasing. QI records Robert J. Ringer's 2000 book giving it as “an election is nothing more than an advanced auction of stolen goods” — advance hardened into advanced, sale dropped, and nothing more than was added. QI tracks that drift ↗, and it is this altered form that the 2006 Bierce credit carries.

“every election is sort of an advance auction sale” Variant

A transposed order circulates widely and is what Wikiquote prints, citing Charting the Candidates ’72 (1972) by Ronald Van Doren, p. 7 ↗ rather than the 1936 column. QI's transcription of the essay reads “a sort of advance auction sale.”

The short form quoted everywhere — “every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods” — is word-for-word Mencken's own clause, and Quote Investigator credits him with it in the 1936 essay ↗. It is the “advanced auction” version, and the Bierce byline, that are counterfeit.

Context

Written eight days before a landslide

The essay ran in Baltimore on 26 October 1936. The presidential election was held on 3 November 1936 — eight days later — and it went overwhelmingly against everything Mencken was arguing: Franklin D. Roosevelt took 60.8% of the popular vote and 46 of the 48 states, burying Alf Landon and consolidating the New Deal coalition.

That is the joke buried inside the line. Mencken was writing at the peak of his opposition to the New Deal, in a campaign fought squarely over whether the federal government should spend to relieve hardship. Where Roosevelt saw relief, Mencken saw a transaction: politicians locating groups who want what they cannot have, promising it, and paying for it out of somebody else's pocket. His verdict on that machinery — government as a broker in pillage — is what makes the auction metaphor bite rather than merely sneer.

Government is a broker in pillage.

Where the essay ended up, and why the line hides in a newspaper

Twenty years on, the essay was gathered into A Carnival of Buncombe (Johns Hopkins Press, 1956), the collection of Mencken's political journalism edited by Malcolm Moos and published the year he died. Its contents run through the campaigns he covered — “Normalcy,” “Onward Christian Soldiers: Hoover & Al,” “Roosevelt Minor,” “Roosevelt & Alf.”

Mencken had been at the Baltimore papers since 1899 and kept writing for The Sun, The Evening Sun and The Sunday Sun until a stroke stopped him in 1948. The 1936 essay sits inside that long newspaper run, which is why the sentence never turns up in the books people reach for — and why it took a dedicated search of the column archive to place it.

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Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Quote Origin: Every Election Is a Sort of Advance Auction Sale of Stolen Goodsquoteinvestigator.com

The definitive investigation. Traces the line to Mencken's essay “Sham Battle,” Baltimore Evening Sun, 26 October 1936; tracks the drift to “advanced auction” by 2000 and the reassignment to Ambrose Bierce by 2006.
H. L. Mencken — Wikiquoteen.wikiquote.org

Carries the full passage in its 1940s–present section, in a transposed wording, cited to Charting the Candidates ’72 (1972) by Ronald Van Doren, p. 7.
A Carnival of Buncombe (1956)archive.org

Catalogue record for the Johns Hopkins Press collection in which QI says “Sham Battle” was reprinted: Baltimore, 1956, 370 pages.
On Politics: A Carnival of Buncombe (1960)archive.org

A later Vintage Books volume of Mencken's political writing under a related title — New York, 1960, 422 pages.
H. L. Mencken — Wikipediaen.wikipedia.org

Biography: born 12 September 1880, died 29 January 1956, both in Baltimore; wrote for The Sun papers from 1899 until a stroke in 1948; opposed the New Deal.
H. L. Mencken's public-domain worksgutenberg.org

Free full texts of his earlier books — the five Prejudices series, The American Language, In Defense of Women, Notes on Democracy. The 1936 essay is not among them.

About the author

The Sage of Baltimore

H. L. Mencken

1880–1956 · American journalist, satirist and cultural critic

Henry Louis Mencken was born in Baltimore on 12 September 1880 and spent essentially his whole career there, joining the city's newspapers in 1899 and writing for The Sun, The Evening Sun and The Sunday Sun until a stroke ended his writing life in 1948. He co-founded The American Mercury in 1924, produced the landmark study The American Language, and made his name nationally with his savage coverage of the 1925 Scopes trial — the “Monkey Trial,” a phrase he popularised. A lifelong sceptic of mass democracy, he opposed the New Deal at real cost to his popularity, and the compressed, contemptuous style of that opposition is exactly why so many unsourced cynicisms get pinned on him — and why this one, for once, turns out to be real.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Primary source

Mencken, H. L. “Sham Battle.” The Evening Sun (Baltimore), October 26, 1936. Reprinted in A Carnival of Buncombe, edited by Malcolm Moos. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1956. Earliest documented instance per Quote Investigator, “Quote Origin: Every Election Is a Sort of Advance Auction Sale of Stolen Goods,” July 1, 2014.

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Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods’?” Last verified 10 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/every-election-is-a-sort-of-advance-auction-sale-of-stolen/

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