Life — October 3, 1907 — page 10: what you’re looking at

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“While there is Life there’s Hope. VOL. L. OCTOBE 1907 No. 1301 Published by LIFE PUBLISHING COMPAN JAM A. Miter, See'y and Treas 17 West Thirty-first Street, rut, Pres't 5 makes very s ricultural fairs which he has been visiting. at Oneonta about the State of New York, he pointed out that administration in such a State consists of a multiplicity of details, and that good government depends upon painstaking attention to ry matter that comes b. ininistrative officer so as to s He said to the Oneonta folk: When you elect a man to office make sure that he is a man who will represent the people and no special interest, no private undertal ttle it right. ing, and elect no one who assumes to control the political destinies of the com- munity. That, he said, was the way to attain to ideal government. So, no doubt, it is, but it makes ideal government look very far off, and, of course, it is very far off. But there is no choice in methods of obtaining it except between this course that Governor Hughes points out and some sort of despotism. The tendency to extend the powers of the Federal Government, which is now so generally noticed, is a despotic tendency, and based, no doubt, in despair of getting things done that ought to be done in any otherway. But despair of that sort is loss of faith in popular government. Governor Hughes recognizes that his old-fashioned remedy for maladministra- tion is very hard to apply. The principles of our government, he says, are extremely simple, but the successful application of was them is always hindered by the combina- tion of human weakness with efforts to pervert the administration of the govern- ment to selfish purposes, and in some way to get an advantage over the people for which no return is rendered. A compact and timely illustration of the way good government is frustrated by the combination of human weakness and selfish purposes appears in the for- lorn case of the city of New York in the matter of its transit facilities, duc as men with memorics remind us to the power of able and predaccous capitalists to control Tammany Hall and through it the streets of New York. The hopefullest political incident of recent years in its relation to good govern- ment in New York State was the clection of Governor Hughes. Taken in connec- tion with all the circumstances that led up to it, and with the results that have followed it, it helps the observer to bear with fortitude the spectacle of Charles Murphy and Mr. Conners, of Buffalo, in conference as to who are fit persons for the New York Democrats to nominate for Judges of the Court of Appeals. = DO not elect another President for more than a year yet, but the country seems already to be very much on the job, and as usual President Roose- velt is getting most of the attention. There are two considerable bodies of voters who would like to see him run again. One consists of admirers whose zeal or self-interest outruns their judg- ment, and who yearn irrepressibly, or think it politic to seem to yearn, to have him become his own successor. The other consists of hostiles, whose zeal (al- most all accumulated within the last two years) also exceeds their discretion, and who want him to run again because they think he can be beaten. This last group is beginning to pursue boy-tactics with him, daring him to run and assuring him that he will be beaten if he does. But there is no prospect whatever that either ill-advised admirers or hostile malefactors, nature-fakers, prevaricators or any one else will move him from his resolve not to run again. eS 5 O ALL the Democrats that have been talked about, Johnson and Chanler seem the least repellant of possible votes. They would make a nice ticket in the or- der above given, but it is not so clear that it would be a strong ticket. The Demo- crats might do well to borrow the Hon. Samuel W. McCall, of Massachusetts, and run him on an anticentralization and antitariff platform. He would make an able, conservative candidate for some party, and if there is no existing party that wants a conservative candidate it is time that one was organized and started in business. It is the truth, though, that Hughes, ‘Taft, Root, Knox, Fairbanks. any one whom the Republicans i the least likely to nominate, will look con- servative by comparison with Roosevelt. Among all the prominent Republican leaders there are only two complete, out- and-out Roosevelt Republicans. One is Mr. Roosevelt. The other varies from week to week. T WAS encouraging to read of the re- cent arrest of about a dozen of our fel- low-citizens in Pennsylvania charged with criminal complicity in the stealings that made the furnishing of the new State Capitol so noisome a scandal. ‘The com- fort that results to the feelings of the gen- eral public from jailing persons who be- long in jail does not usually amount to enough to pay for the trouble of bringing them to justice; but the Pennsylvania Capitol frauds were so preposterously im- pudent that there is much more than common interest in having somebody punished for them. Of all the great States Pennsylvania is the rottenest. An instructive list was lately printed of the direful ends to which had come a dozen or more of the political accom- plices in local affairs of the late Senator Quay. It wasa list full of shame, calam- ityand suicide. The State Capitol frauds were fruits of the same school of which the Quay accomplices were graduates. comicbooks.com