Life — September 14, 1911 — page 10: what you’re looking at

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

SEPTEMBER 14, 1911 uiblished by LIFE PUBLISHING COMPANY ALMITCHELE, Prert AL MILLEN, Sey and Treat, 1 West Thirty-first NE of the steady occupations in s nowadays is A 8 he construction of vpinions as to Goy- ernor Woodrow Wilson, and whether he is, or is not, the best man to be the Democratic candidate next year. For though the conventions won't meet for nine or ten months yet, it is not too soon now for the political gen- tlemen who aspire to guide the con- ventions to reach conclusions as to whom they want. Governor Wilson gets careful attention, and is a sub- ject for frequent ruminations in many minds, He is the least understood and the most studied of all the Demo- cratic candidates. Along with many testimonies as to his talents, force, ac- complishments, character and other qualifications, we see or hear .it said that he talks too much, that he is a demagogue, that he is the cleverest politician of them all, that he lacks executive ability, that his tempera- mental quality isn’t right, that his dis- position is to drive rather than to per- ade, that he is mentally insincere, that he changes lifelong opinions to meet the popular demand. Other things are said about him, but these will do. Expectant Demo- cratic leaders observe him, read him, look about, wonder and commit the case to what machinery they keep in the back of their heads. Governor Harmon is a simple, definite proposi- tion, and very good of his kind, and the kind is not novel, but Governor Wilson is a new sort on whom the old measurements do not seem to fit, We have had radicals before, but Lardly a radical like him; hardly a radical who is a scholar, a gentleman, an orator of great power and charm, a student and teacher and writer of IEPA political history for twenty-five years, a Governor who won his election by his own campaigning, and has in of- fice been bold and successful in intro- ducing the measures and reforms that he advocated on the stump. When they say that Gdvernor Wil- son is mentally insincere they mean, we suppose, that he does not really think what he thinks (and says) he thinks. After his tight with the ty bosses in Connecticut he said he had changed his mind about the initiative and referendum, and after condemn- ing them for twenty years, had con- cluded they were needed and desirable. The change of opinion does not seem unaccountable. It may weil have been n efiect of practice upon theory. For our part we don't at all doubt Dr. Wilson's sincerity, mental or moral, nor think him a demagogue, nor worry about his executive ability. He may be of a temperament that car- ries him into avoidable antagonisms, but is by no means a fatal political fault. He may talk too much for his. own political good, but certainly not for ours, for he is a new man in poli- tics, and we are glad to learn about all his ideas, including his indiscre- tions. There may be—probably there is—a man in him that words do not express, but he certainly is not using words for purposes of concealment. When he speaks he almost always says something, and he has pretty well dis- closed his views, and is still at it. There is a great movement going en in the minds of men. Governor Wilson is in sympathy with much of it. Whether you call him a radical or a progressive, he is recognized as a man who will seek to guide this cur- rent movement rather than to dam it. ‘There is nothing reactionary about him. He will try, in so far as he has a chance, to get for the country such new things as look good to him, and to avoid what looks bad. The ques- tion for delegates, and afterward for voters, is whether they will want next year the things that he wants, and think him the likeliest man to attain them. They are likely to know what he wants, for he will tell them ampl; Whether they will know what they want themselves is a harder question, so many political novelties are offered to the voters. are not likely to run clear through to the millennium on our present tack. Some time there is coming a lull in progressiveness, or at least, a change in its direction. The effort has been for some time past, end still is, to reduce the powers and gains of the strong—of the bosses in politics and of “the interests” both in politics and in business. To that end is the struggle to reduce the tariff, and to enforce laws of commercial regulation and restraint, and enact new may expect to get approxi- mately through with this line of work presently, to get the tariff properly pared down, and provide for the rail- roads and trusts as much restriction and regulation as is compatible with the transaction of the country’s busi- ness; or, perhaps, more. Then wha shall we do? Perhaps the next thing will be the regulation of combination in the iy terest of labor. That can no more go the whole length of its possibilities than the combinations of capital can. Evidently if capital must go to Wash- ington or to the courts for permis- sion to combine, and be limited in its combinations, labor in the end will have to do the same. And in that there may be a coming issue on which Presidential candidates will expound their views and parties take sides, and there are very pretty fights in sight in it, to be sure UST as President Taft went on a long journey a year ago to tell all the people why he signed the Payne bill, so now he goes again to tell them why he vetoed the bill to revise the wool schedule. It is to doubt whether his success in this case will better his success in that. Luckily, though, he has other topics for discourse, as reci- procity and the arbitration treaties, but so far his defense of his wool veto has not been helpful. comicbooks.com