Life — November 24, 1910 — page 12: 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. LVI, NOVEMBER 2, 1910, No. 1465 Published by LIFE PUBLISHING COMPANY SLA. MITCHELL, Pres’, A, MILLER, Sec'y and Treas, 17 West Thisty-first Street, New York FRIEND and reader of Lire in Spokane, i a vote against the better in Kew York States Doesn't T: R, inabite of bis bluster and personal obtrusive: ness, really represent clean government? And isn’t it true that a vote for Stimson is only a vote for Roosevelt in that it is a vote for the principles and policies Roosevelt rep- resents? ‘And would you defeat a man. like Stimson, and, more important, the political school he represents, merely to sevelt a slap— make him sit down and cool his head? That’ wrong—to my mind dead wrong—and the sort of policy Lirg makes a great mistake to adopt. “Haven't you bent your ear to the cries of the mob, or. is there something in the, New York situation which we out he can't see? ‘Lhese are penctrating questions and worth the best answer we can make. Nix will be a new man in political ottice. He is a country manufacturer, a@ man of excellent reputation. Tam- many is in politics for business rea- sons. Dix isn’t. If business reasons weighed heavily with him he would keep out of politics and give his time to his business. We believe he is in politics for very heaorable and high- minded reasons—to help to put the Democratic party on a decent basis in the State—which is a matter of na- tional importance—and to do his duty as a citizen. He was not an aspirant for the Governorship, but was drafted —by Tammany, the up-State Demo- crats concurring—to run for that office. Tammany doubtless took him because Murphy and Cohalan concluded that they would fare better at his hands than with any other man who could get the votes of all the New York State Democrats, and also of the Re- publicans who wanted to vote against their own party. To do that they had LIFE to hav. a pretty good man, and some one who was not a Tammany man. Finally they took Dix. He got the Democratic vote—all the varieties of it, but what elected him was the votes of Republicans, or the absence from the polls of Republicans who preferred that he should be elected. In our judg- ment he does not stand for a lower grade of political life, or against the better things in this State, but stands for the better things, especially in the Democratic partys Tammany is bad enough, Heaven knows—a terrible blight on the Democratic party ir: New York and elsewhere, though a natural enough product of its electorate. But to ask New York Democrats to ab- stain from voting for good Democratic State candidates until after Tammany has been destroyed is to ask them to ge permanently out of business. That wouldn't do. We don’t kill a dog to get rid of his fleas. We feed him and expect him to fight them. If he won't, let them have his carcass. 1f Murphy gets Dix’s carcass, the Republicans will win again at the next election. Gov- ernor Hughes raised the standard of political expectation in this State. Mr. Dix has got to live up to it, and we do not doubt that he will do his best to do so. His position is strong and he ought to succeed. é ReOsevetr represents clean gov- ernment—expensive, but clean. His appointees as a rule have been honest and able men, though not the only honest men. But Roosevelt just now chiefly represents Roosevelt. We thought it was not true that a vote for Stimson was only a vote for Roose- velt in that it was a vote for Roose- velt’s principles and policies. We thought it was a vote to make Roose- velt’s personality dominate the Repub- lican politics of the State of New York, and beyond that, of the coun- try. We grew more and more of that opinion with every week of the cam- paign. We do not think it well for the country to be redominated by the Colonel’s personality. He is a good man, but his urgency is extreme and his brakes are in mighty bad order, and the road ahead for our country just now is hilly. Moreover, though a good man, he is fairly shifty and quite imperious and abusive. And do you think he is particularly wise about the principles of government, and espe cially well qualified to tinker our in- stitutions? For our part, we do not think so. Mr. Lydecker wrote of him the other day in the Evening Post: The strain of religious zeal in Roosevelt is his chief and mest conspicuous asset, and his extraordinary vigor and activity “have syabled im to make the most of that asset, If he had iad greater intellectual po would probably have fallen far short in ine energetic wo’ he has done. , He hes enly one theme, and that is founded on his chief asset. It will be a great disappointme..t to him that no one will recognize him as a ood politcal student and builder of govera- ment It seems to us that that is true, ex- cept that he has two themes, the other being natural history. His chief asset is a mighty good one, but he is not a specialist in the theory and practice of constitutional government, and not qualified, in our judgment, to direct or even inspire, the adjustment of our in- stitutions to the various difficult prob- lems that lie ahead of us. He would certainly try if we let him—will try, no doubt, when he has got his breath again and the country has had an in- terval of repose. S for Stimson, he was lost in the crush. He is a good man—ap- parently, for the moment, a little too much Roosevelted. He could not have been elected this year in any case, but as it was, after the Colonel got into the campaign he monopolized all at- tention—with the best intentions to the contrary—and Stimson became a wild cry on the horizon, emulating his bene- factor in futile echoes of defamation. The more the Colonel whirlwinded the more inevitably he made himself the issue, superseding all others, which after all did Stimson little harm, for the other issues would have beaten him if the Colonel had given them a chance. The Payne bill, Taft’s Winona speech, Ballinger, high prices and gen- eral Republican disgruntlement, were amply enough to have beaten Stim- son, but the Colonel got the job away from them.