The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1884-10-22
REFORM AND REFORMERs.
Improvement Can Only BE Accomplished by
Putting Strong Men in Office.

improvement Can Only BE Accomplished by
Putting Strong Men in Office.
"Gath's' New York Letter.
Reform is the vice of little minds. Every pub
lie man owes it to himself TO be doing something
for reform all the time, but it must be in the
line of the public business and not in the line of
mouthing and toothing about the word re
FORM Every time we set to work to turn some
thing out of power we call it reform. When
ever they get to work to turn US out of power it
is also reform. But after all reform does not
proceed from professions, but from the necessi-
ties of things The great reforms of this country
have been no reforms at all in the eyes of plati-
tudinarians. General jackson was a great
former, but he is the very man the dudes signal
ize as the chief enemy of civil-service reform.
Old Andrew jackson in the first place reformed
the Indians He whipped them numerically
and made civilized States where they had lived
and loated In the next place he reformed Jefer-
son and his successors, who had become
dudes and Pharisees, and lived on high flown
sentences and had no consideration for the
frontiers. He broke down, not the Federal
party, which had been broken down long before,
but the Virginia Republican party, and put in
place of it the Democracy. and by the name of
Democracy it has ever since been called. Then
he destroyed the individual power of Nick Bid
die, who was operating under the corporation
name Of the United States Bank. He sent Nick
to the old Nick. About the same time he
formed incipient secession under the jefferson
ian name of notification. He also reformed
scandalizing presidential candidates for his wife
he had lived with some time before he had
lawyers title to her He was assaulted for having
taken another mans wife, whereas the other
man had never treated his wife as if she was
either wife or woman. Consequently all the
assaults on jackson on behalf of his wife and her
husband who had been driven off, amounted to
nothing whatever elected
for two terms, and would have elected him for
another if he had not seen fit to retire.
So reform is in the line of general policy if it
amounts to anything, and often comes in the
line of political advantage. Free trade in Eng
land, if it is a good thing for England, was
passed by Tory Minister belonging to that par
ty which was welded to the old protective policy.
He came to place where he had to have votes,
and he borrowed them from the free traders and
kept himself Prime Minister by that means, and
through his new political utilization adopted the
new views. Many man is converted to
proper policy by his personal aversiOns. What
can happen in domestic life is more ant to hap
pen in political life. The accidents which make
men find wives are infinite in their conjunction.
So in politics. Men are propelled toward the
right, If they have healthy natures, from the in
stinct which would have propelled in another
age warrior to leave his chief or King and
make another combination.
Take old Governor Reeder the first Governor
of Kansas Territory after it had been resolved
10 THROW LndJ open 10 slavery, unuer
the beautiful suggestion that slavery and free
dom were natural competitors and, whichever
triumphed the other must not complain As
we'll might it be said that mans stomach might
take little water and the same amount of
poison, and if the one was stronger than the
other he had been treated like a gentleman.
Poor old Reeder sent out to Kansas after he
had voted his whole life with the conservative
pro-slavery party. He had never seen slavery
in the face but behed it from a distance with
the eyes of compromise When he got out to
Kansas he saw just what it amounted tO-croco-
dies, catamounts, unciviized monkeys, all
armed with shotguns and bowie -knives coming
into Kansas to give her the univided benefits of
slavery. Elections were a sham; constitutions
were nothing to discuss, but to be put right
through with fire and sword A man from
some part of the North who thought that
little matter of slavery or freedom might
be discussed for day or two was
at once considered to be worse than an incendi.
airy, and Knocked in the head. If he had wife
and children, they had notice served on them to
leave the Territory by a given time, or they
would get the entire enlightenment of
slavery, according to the condition it might be
in at the end of the time, through the favorite
medium which it partpok of.
Poor old Reeder born in honest old Pennsyl-
vania, sympathized with the people he was sent
to protect. He turned out to be a far more useful
friend of freedom than any Abolitionist in the
North. The Abolitionists were the formulators
OF that time. The old Democratic Governor was
the friend of freedom, when he could get look
at it. compared with its bastard brother.
The temperance question and many of the
other questions now sought to be run up to
prominence are of the dude character. Tenn
peranee is to be assisted by putting strong men
in the government. who will see where there is an
insurgent influence and compel it to submit to
terms But no government can ever be made
perfect enough to order another mans dinner.