Life — October 18, 1906 — page 8: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

“While there is Life there's Hope.” VOL. XLVIII. OCT. 18, 1906. No. 1251 17 West Turety-Fiast Steret, New Yous. L P us take one eye off of Colonel Hearst’s interesting cam- paign for Governor of New York long enough toad- _mire the creditable piece of work that has been done in our name in Cuba. Cuba has had the most indulgent deal that it was possible to give her. Not only have American inten- tions—barring those of Albert Beveridge —been good, but they have been carried out with admirable forbearance and dis- cretion. There is no doubt that our Commissioners did their utmost to find responsible Cuban hands in which to deposit the administration of the island, but President Palma’s resignation and the refusal of the Cuban Congress to elect a new President left no alternative to shifting the immediate responsibility onto American shouiders. How and when, if ever, it is to be again transferred back to the Cubans is matter for speculation. What President Palma’s Government might eventually have been able to do if left entirely alone cannot now be told, but there was no encoura- ging prospect that it would be able to put down the rebels. It could not be left alone, and under the terms of the Platt Amendment no uprising in Cuba can long be left alone. ‘The question remains whether a free, independent and stable government can be worked out in Cuba without as many revolutions as the process demands. There is no doubt that the Palma Government denied the Cutens fair elec- tions, but fair elections were also denied to the voters in our own Southern States for the reason that the negro party in those States was not fit to govern. We have tacitly admitted that in our South *LIFE* that reason was valid. ‘The same may be true in Cuba. The numerical major that island may be unfit to maintain a tolerable Government. Whether it is or not can only be determined by experi- ment, and the moment any given experi- ment begins to threaten the sugar and tobacco crop we are bound to interfere and stop it. Altogether, forecasting the immediate destinies of Cuba seems a job for seventh sons, All we know is that if Cuba cannot take care of herself Uncle Sam is obli- gated to take care of her and that if it comes to annexation there will be violent objections from the beneficiaries of our tariff on sugarand tobacco. ‘The elimina- tion of revolution from Cuban independ- ence is a good deal like the elimination of nosebleed from football. It can be done if the umpire is strong enough, but the chances are it will spoil the game. ie IS likely that Cuba will one day be joined to the United States, thereby getting stable government and the autoc- racy which all the States of our Union enjoy. That result is geographically suit- able, and will doubtless be satisfactory, when it comes, to a majority of the Cubans large enough to include all who ought to be satisfied. But inevitably with any such arrangement there will com@ a prodigious clash over the tariff. What the tariff has done to us in the way of demoralizing our citizenship and perverting our Government only now begins to be appreciated. What it will do to us before we get through with it nobody can foresee. There are observers, how- ever, who compare it with slavery, which strengthened its hold on the South as the property interests depending upon it in- creased until what at first had been uni- versally felt to be an evil, tolerated tem- porarily for special reasons, came finally to be cherished and acclaimed by its fanatical advocates as a God-given and ideal institution. We shall be lucky, very lucky, these observers think, if we get quit of our tariff shackles without a strug- gle and sacrifices fit to be compared with the struggle and the sacrifices that paid the final price of-slavery. I SB es OLONEL HEARST’S canvass is doing fine, and the Wall Street Jour- nal asserts that Mr. Brisbane’s salary is to be raised from $72,000 to $100,000. It is hard to understand how so bloated a plutocrat as Mr. Brisbane can be for Hearst, but so he seems to be. It is more fun to be for Hearst. We should be for him if it were not for dislike of the head- ache the morning after. Mr. Brisbane’s paper represents Hearst as saying in Albany, “‘I do not want any man’s vote who does not thoroughly understand me.” Which seems rash, because Colo- nel Hearst’s greatest charm has been that nobody understood him. If he could get the votes of the persons in New York State alone who do not understand him he would beat Hughes by the greatest majority any Governor ever got. It is an entirely new phase in Colonel Hearst to want to be understood, but he is working hard on the new lines, going about undisguised in broad daylight and shaking hands with quantities of voters, especially in the agricultural counties. He does it pretty well. Running for Gov- ernor is doing him good. Any day we may hear that this once retiring man has ordered all the bull’s-eye glass out of the windows of his remarkable city house and registered notice of intention to apply to be joined to the Baptist Church. Lire would gladly hear such news, Any sign and every one of the reapproximation of William Hearst to the normal will be welcomed. His campaign, as has been said, is full of vivacity. The trouble with it is that it is so largely based on misrepresentation, lies and the stimulation of class jealousies. * Among other things, the business of demolishing the political influence of all the first-rate lawyers, on the ground that they are in the pay of corporations, is being systematically prosecuted, with a deplorable degree of success. We cannot spare all the first-rate lawyers out of politics, for they include, as they always have included, some of the wisest leaders of public opinion, and the onc. most feared by demagogues. comicbooks.com