Ottumwa weekly courier. (Ottumwa, Wapello County, Iowa) 1872-1899, 1877-11-21
PIMohED AND WEARlED.

When . man is suffering from hum
ger he is not very nice by what means
he obtains the food to satiatc his ap-
petite. So again, when the CONNER
cial activities of the business men of
the country have been more or less
paralyzed for a long period, they are
not over-nico as to the means employ
cd to revive business. We moan,
when we say this, that these trying
exigencies lead men to sacrifice prin-
ciple if thereby their desires be graf
flied.
Our politics, for some time past,
has had a strong injection of what we
may term the hungry men, the men
who do not find abundance of en-
ployment at high prices, as they were
accustomed to do in the days of war
intoxication and the immediate years
following the war. Barring cases of
misfortune, producing pennry, those
who are being pinched in these times
are the improvident, who do not lay
by for the winter, who make no pro-
vision for the future and the incxora-
BILE law of change in times, but live
up as they 60, all they get, be it much
or little. This element has been nu-
merous and clamorous, and still is.
Like the hungry man, they will not
listen to the story of show, industri.
GUS, honest way to attain supplies,
but it's the money they arc after re-
gardless of the rules Of Justice and
honor to attain it. To this class 1t is no
use to talk of purc, unbending recti-
tude as the guide in politics, but it is
the satisfaction Of hunger they want
and the life and soul of politics, in
so far as they control it, drifts away
from efforts to maintain mans proper
Justice and humanity to man. This
element poisons the life blood Of pol
itics.
Again, the business man is wearied
with partial stagnation in the COM
mercial world, and he pushes to the
front his desire for revival Of trade.
His philanthropy, his love Of the
prevalence Of justice to all men, his
strong sense Of right and of victory
or the right, his earnest demand that
the government shall sternly and un-
compromisingly see to it that the
strong shall not oppress the weak and
mems God-given rights shall not be
shamefully trampled upon, weaken
before his weariness of dull times
and his hunger for business revival.
So this element abandons its high
standard of right and justice and suf-
fers itself to be demoralized.
These are the two classes in the
North that, to-day, are suffering and
aiding the return to power in this ma
ton of the men who committed, in
the last decade, the high crime of q
most bloody and cruel treason be-
cause they were opposed in their ef-
fort to make national the sum of all
villainies, human slavery. In the
case of the hungry, the first of the
1.-TWO elements we have alluded to
above, it would be folly to attempt,
perhaps, to reason with them with
the hope Of doing any good. With
the latter element it should be differ
emit.
Aman of sense, the enlightened sur
geon, should not attempt to heal over
. wound before it has become sound
within; hasty, forced healing Of such
wound only loaves the virns within
to break out sooner or later, and the
second eruption 10 far more serious
than the first. This measuring Of
politics by the yard stick, in the com
mercial centers of tho East, and ne
little elsewhere. is what is yielding
principle for the sake Of temporary
thrift, and ia lowering and debasing
% we believe, the republican stand
ard with many.