Life — June 25, 1914 — page 10: what you’re looking at

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

> RBVE ° Consolation for the Anxious UR land abounds with anxious in- quirers, getting more anxious every day, who would like to know in what group of people, or in what kind of people, is de- posited nowadays the intelligence by which the country must be run. For many years before the Civil War the country was run by a combination of the business interests of the North with the slave- holding aristocracy of the South. Finally that combination broke down on the slavery question, and the great party of moral ideas and high tariffs was born, and gave us government, with two four-year intermissions, for fifty- two years. It began as a government of moral ideas, and collapsed as a gov- ernment of business interests. It was succeeded by a new party of moral ideas that got its strength chiefly from the South, where a good, long siege of poverty had directed men’s minds more than in the North to the consolations of religion and politics. It drew strength also from the West, where Mr. Bryan was an ac- cepted prophet, and the opinion prevailed that the people of the Eastern States got more than their share of the money, and where the disposition was lively and constant to get as much as possible of it away from them. And it drew strength from the Have-nots generally, and from so many of the reformers and enthu- siasts as were not included in the groups of the Socialists and the millennial Progressives. O now we have government by our new party of moral ideas, with abundant assurance from the bystanders that it doesn’t know its business, and is sure to make a mess of it. One squad of critics is sure it has got business MADAM? by the heels and is rolling it into its grave. Another is sure of its en- tire incapacity to deal with foreign affairs, and is certain we shall have a war. Another is mad because we have let Mexico go a year without getting in there; is mad because the tariff was reduced; is mad because the currency bill was passed; is mad because the railroads have been chastened, and be- cause the stock-market is still dull. Well, well! Call it a government of amateurs and admit, for purposes of argument only, that it makes mistakes and does some things ill. When the professional rulers fall out what else is possible but government by amateurs? Will those who want the old-style Re- publicans back in office please rise! It’s a small crowd. Now those who want the Progressives in power. Dear, dear, what a meagre showing! What is “CAN'T I WRITE YOU SOME LIFE INSURANCE, YOU MAY NEED IT ON A DAY LIKE “NO; I'M PERFECTLY WELL, AND CAN'T YOU SEE YM BUSY HATCHING THIS HEARTED BOY HAS LEFT IN MY NEST?” THAT A KIND- there for it, then, but to let the ama- teurs go on! They are still the people's choice. ‘i is a waste of strength to apologize for Mr. Wilson's administration, If it doesn’t govern the country to suit the voters it will be dismissed two years from next November. Meanwhile it is the only administra- tion we can have, and we might as well take what comfort we can with it. If the real true brains of the country are not in it, where are they? Mr. Root has got some of them, Mr. Taft some, Mr. Roosevelt some, but so long as Mr. Root’s brains and Mr. Taft's are enlisted in keeping Mr. Roosevelt out of office, and vice versa, what can we do but make the best of an administration of amateurs and applaud its efforts? Everyone else has had a turn and has failed. Except for the Democratic amateurs we should have had no government. If we have been at fault we ought at least to be allowed the poor luxury of taking our punishment in peace. If we failed to recognize the bless- ings, so long continued, of busi- ness government by Mr. Can- non and Mr. Aldrich, it is right that we should smart for it, but why intensify our dis- tress by howling calamity so long before anything effec- tual can be done to save us from the consequences of our errors! Besides, the condition of being an amateur is not neces- sarily permanent. Some ama- teurs learn, and maybe. ours will, Maybe they are not so green as they seem to their critics. Maybe there is more than one way of getting along with the work of government and the way they practice is one of the ways, and not neces- sarily bad because it is not a perfect copy of the last pattern. After all, it is no fault of this administration that it is not like the last or the last but one. The people wanted something — different. They got it, E. S. Martin.