The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1874-01-15
Jan. Is, 1877
Dinner,


leaders in Maine are very much divided
on tho subject of maintaining or aban-
doning their old party organization. Many
of them have whistled many years and
many different tunes with great shrillness
and show of cheerfulness to keep up their
courage, but whistling is an-out-of-door, va
grant performance, that one gets tired of in
time, and this time has come to many Demo-
cratic leaders. For years, they have been
hungry now they are famishing. They want
dinner and some of them propose to have it,
and now they are cudgelling their brains over
the ways and means. A few of these gentle
men, we are assured, will join the Republi-
can party if invited and admitted to full fel-
lowship. Others have seen how nicely the
Farmers movement has worked in Wisconsin
for the Democracy-how under banner
bearing strange device, except the PROPOSE
ton for free rum,-the old Bourbon leaders in
that State have obtained all the offices and
are happy. 1t is intimated that some of the
old leaders are so confident that success, that
is, dinner, lies in that direction, that
they have Joined the farmers clubs
where they express very decided opinions
as to under draining and pipe-laying, and at
the Poultry Exhibition are equally confident
that spring chickens should not be picked
from the trees too young. They drink two
years old cider by the quart, and under its in
spiration insist that it is very rare that fall
ploughing can be done in the spring with prof
it. A few mistaken but honest souls who in
years gone by, have occasionally met Demo-
cratic farmer in party conventions, have con-
ceiyed the ludicrous idea that the tillers of
the soil are generally ofthe order of their typi-
cal man. Consequently they allow their hair
to grow long, neglect the comb, forget the
use of water as cleansing agent, wear thick
boots, drawl out their words and affect slang.
Indeed, it is said that a few of them are SO
infatuated with the conviction that dinner
lies in this direction that they make their re-
spectiye neighborhoods unpleasant by thrash
ing the bare floors of their empty stables, be-
fore day, with that rude instrument of grain
torture called a fail; beat their hands after
the manner of the old-fashioned schoolmas-
ter with ferules to give them the consistency
OF the horny handed yeoman; while the voice
that has been potent in the caucus is now ex-
ercsed in shouting to imaginary but taldy
bovines.
. There is one class however that the Dem
Ocratic leaders have learned to avoid since
their trial of the Greeley experiment-the
dozen of ex-federal office holders in this
State who laid away stores of honey against
political winter during the first eight years
of Republican rule, when revenue offices
paid so WELL Now these gentlemen talk
gibly of civil service reform, Of high SAL
aries, wire pulling and corruption. Their
convenient consciences did not harrass
them about these things while they dis
posed of patronage to their friends, recon-
mended the increase of the number and sal
aries of offices, turned out those who tailed
to do their bidding and extorted assessments
from subordinates for political purposes.
Democratic leaders, in general, are not very
acute, but they are not SO blind as to take
aay stock in the reform ''palaver'' of these
discarded officials. Obtuse and blind politically
as the Democratic leaders have shown them
selves to be, they know that these ex-oficials
have no more love for civil service or any
other reform than they themselve have.
The Democracy know that every one Of
this class is seeking dinner.
The Democratic magnates, therefore, are
very tardy in accepting the oficious sugges.
tons Of this small band of 'disgruntled" pol
iticians to drop the Democratic organization
and bring the forty or fifty thousand adher-
ents Of that party in Maine to join the new
party these men are trying to create, which
has no soldiers except a score who demand
the privilege of being standard bearers. The
Democratic chieftains for the sake of dinner,
would gladly subscribe to any set of princi-
Piles, even to the civil service rules and a
Maine law with State Constabu,ary but
they will sooner remain where they are than
become the subordinates of men, who,
as Office holders were so greedy as not now to
afford hope that, if restored to power, they
would practice that Jacksonian maxim, so
dear to the Democratic heart, viz: ''to the
victors belong the spoils," to the extent which
would satisfy the vast demands of the FAM
ished Bourbons. aa @
1t is fair to conclude, from full acquaint-
ance with and study of the men now politi
caliy uneasy, that SO far as the leaders are
concerned, the restlessness is caused by hun
ger for which there is no relief but dinner.