Life — November 1, 1906 — page 20: what you’re looking at

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

¢ is Life there's Hope.” VOL. XLVHI NOV. 1, 1906. No. 1253. 17 West Turery-Frest Steerer, New Yorn ARST is going to get the votes of a good » many decent people who are justly dis- gusted with the old_ parties Hi}f and their leader- & ship in New A York, and whe read the Hearst papers and noth- ing else, and believe what they read in them. Itisa pity that Hearst should get these votes, because he does not truly represent such people. He represents nothing on earth but Hearst, and to say that does not make the matter much clearer, for who knows what Hearst is? He is something without standards, with- out morals or fixed principles of any known kind; not so much wicked as detached, and unmoral. So equipped, he wants power. Power is amusing. We all want it, and all like it more or less, if we get it. Hearst seems to have started in the newspaper line for entertainment and to have got it. Along with the entertainment he got power, and liked it and wanted more. The taste for it has grown on him. He wants now to be President. In that there is vast power and enormous entertain- ment. His equipment for the attempt is a very large fortune, a remarkable string of newspapers and an entire absence of character. ‘There are some advantages in having no character. It is next to having no body. Weapons have no effect on a bodi- less person, Words and facts have not much effect on a person without char- acter. What he says, what he does, what is found out and disclosed sbout him, doesn’t make much difference. He has no shame and no compunction; no credit to lose, no honor to be wounded, nothing to forfeit except health and money. That is why Hearst is almost invul- nerable, and why he may be expected to -LIFE-: go on in the race for the Presidency just as long as he can hire men and buy ink and paper and presses, and has the energy to push on. DO not sympathize with the notion that he is the creature of his hired men. He has energies of his own, Brisbane did not invent him, nor Carvalho nor Ihmsen. He was his own Frankenstein and is his own mon- ster; a most curious monster, as queer and unhuman in his way as John Rocke- feller is in his. What a pity he is not good! “What a pity,” as Colonel Watterson says, “that Mr. Hearst should be Mr. Hearst.” What a pity that his adventurous detach- ment from the ordinary world, the authorized flesh and the common, every- day, cut and dried devil could not have been geared to a true philanthropy and some fixed principles of truth and wis- dom. It isa pity, but after all if Hearst was not Hearst he wouldn’t be Hearst, and it is possible that he would be less useful in the long run than, being Hearst, he may be. For a lively and aggressive outcast politician has his us He can scare better men out of their beds and send them running to look after the fire. Hearst is as good as a fire-alarm and may be, with his dissemination of class jeal- ousies and cultivation of hatreds, as ser- viceable in due time as a war. Look what he has accomplished already in New York State. There were two parties, one moribund, the other corrupt and utterly selfish. He has swallowed the one and frightened the other into putting up an able, honest man to run against him for Governor. He could not have done that except by being the fearsome freak he is. He stands for punishment; for kicking with impartial foot all the shirks who leave government to take care of itself and laws to work their own enforcement. Irresponsible himself, he is a great awak- ener of responsibility in others. E OUGHT to be thankful for Hearst, the unabashable. He is much more useful to the State of New York than Governor Higgins is. Higgins could notclean.upthe Republican partyin New York. Maybe Hearst will. He is more reformative than that decent man, Mayor McClellan. McClellan could not wallop Tammany. Maybe Hearst can. If there is not sense enough and righteous energy enough in New York State to beat Hearst next Tuesday the next best thing for New York may be for Hearst to win. More of the Hearst medicine, say we, until the patient begins to throw it up. If we were not too easily contented with indifferent government, if we were not content to have corruptible legislatures and mer- cenary bosses and to let the public fran- chises be bought from them instead of from the people, if we were not content to endure extortion and to buy off the extortioners instead of fighting them, if we were readier to defend the weak, and to curb the voracity of giants and monop- olists, if we were not so lazy and had not so nearly lost our capacity for effectual indignation, we would have little to fear or to gain from Hearst and his political pyrotechnics. —__» E HAVE come to have great hopes of Mr. Hughes. It is a pleasure to support a man who gives so much prom- ise of being worth supporting. We are highly appreciative of Hearst’s activity in compelling his nomination, and appre- ciative, also, of whatever share in the same work belongs to the Paladin of Oyster Bay. The Paladin is by far the most useful explosive force there is in contemporary politics. Hearst is an in- voluntary but important helper to him. The Paladin gets done some of the things that fear of Hearstism makes possible. Some of them are so important that if there was no other way to get them done Hearst’s way would surely get a trial. Something can be done to keep Hearst out of the White House by showing what manner of man he is, but the important thing to do is to leave no reasonable ex- cuse for sending him there. That is the work the Paladin has put his shoulder to, and it isa great work. A lesser but vastly important work in the same lines will fall to Mr. Hughes if he is elected, and that is to leave no reasonable excuse for putting Hearst up again for Governor of New York. comicbooks.com