Life — May 1, 1919 — page 22: 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” Published by LIFE PUBLISHING COMPANY Anprew Mutter, President and Treasurer James S. Metcatrn, Secretary 17 West Thirty-first Street, New York English Offices, Rolls House, Breams Bldgs., London, E. C, F anybody is pleased with Mr. Burleson, now is the time to speak up. There seems to be quite a general disposition to have him dislocated from office. At least, the disposition is general so far as it has found expression as yet in print. The Republicans, of course, want him fired. But so also do considerable numbers of Democrats. The Spring- field Republican, a hearty supporter of the administration, having experienced the annoyances of a telephone strike in Massachusetts, s: ‘Time's up for Mr. Burleson. His retirement should not be delayed—certainly not beyond the time of the President's return from the Peace Congress.” The World, a Democratic paper, and a_ trenchant Lacker of the President a good deal of the time, says: “Mr. Burleson is the heaviest burden that President Wilson has to carry. He has done more to discredit the Administration and the Democratic party than all its professed enemies combined.” The World has opened on him with its big guns. We were wishing last week that Mr. Burleson ‘would make an accounting for the use of the powers he has exercised during his long term of office, and that a body of non-parti- san experts would audit it and tell us how he stands. He has not done so up to this time of writing, but the World, which is bursting with zeal to get rid of him, printed, on April 21st, a story not less than ten columns long, about his delinquencies as a man and a congressman, and as Postmaster-Gen- eral and administrator of telephones and telegraphs. Considering the zeal of the narrator and the amount of space used, Mr. Burleson got off comparatively well. He was described as a man of great energy, and unflinching diligence in business. The story was repeated that he made money out of convict labor, and drove his convicts hard. He was pictured as a spe st in getting the most work out of people for the least money, as an incessant politician, as a man greedy of power and indifferent to the opinion of his associates and who hy his oppressive methods had driven postal employees into the American Federation of Labor by the thousand. For good measure Mr. Seibold put in that he was credited, along with Mr. Daniels and Mr. Bryan, with having put through the “dry” legislation, that he had bothered the independent tele- phone companies that have been trying “to compete with the Bell telephone monopoly,” and so on, and so on. UT as for the independent tele- phone companies, they are a nui- sunce wherever they exist, and to bother them is a virtue, and as for national Prohibition, it is quite popular, and Mr. Burleson’s support of it may have been good politics. Organized labor doesn’t scem to like Mr. Burle- son, but what do the farmers think of him? Do they credit him with the par- cel post and extension of rural free delivery? The cities don’t like him. As a rule he is mean to them, and the bigger they are the meaner he is; but what do the rural districts think of him? Mr. Wilson seems to have a high opinion of him, and is more likely, when he gets back, to abbreviate his powers and mitigate his methods than to fire him. T scems more prudent not to expect to part with Mr.-Burleson very soon, but to regard him as part of the disci- pline, the necessary discipline, which, for its sins, the United States has been undergoing for the last six years. As a postmaster-general and administra- tor of telephones and telegraphs, he seems to be a good deal ot a nuisance, and a very active and hard-working one, but as a discipline he is fine. He teaches people what to expect when they run too hard after money, and neglect politics, and fetch loose from Democratic ideals, and let persons from outlying districts get government away from them. Nice, considerate men arc no good for discipline. The fellows to take the conceit out of the elect are ruthless persons like Daniels, Burleson and Skelton Williams, who have ideas about what the people ought to want, and, when they get the power, slam ahead and make them take it. The amount of good that has been done since 1912, to narrow-minded and ob- tuse people in the North by more or less fanatical interlopers from the South and West, and especially from Texas, is beyond computation. The old line Republicans got to think that business was the chief end of man, and property the supreme good and su- preme power. They are slowly being weaned from that delusion. The idea prevails a good deal here- abouts that the members of Mr. Wilson’s cabinet have not been compe- tent. On the contrary, they have been remarkably competent for their main business, which was to abate some of the self-conceit of gentlemen, chiefly Republicans, who believed they had a natural right to rule the country, and were the only men with the brai do it. They are gradually getting over that idea, and discovering that they did rot know it all, and were not the sole depositaries of ability, are now begin- ning to experience that pleasant growth s to