Belmont chronicle. [volume] (St. Clairsville, Ohio) 1855-1973, 1886-11-11

FROM paper n Machine Politics in
New York City, by Theodore Roosevelt.
in the November Century; The reputa~
BILE private citizens It small means thus
often neglect to attend to their public
duties because to do so would perhaps
Interfere with their private business.
This is bad enough. but the case is worse
with he really wealthy, who still more
generally neglect these same duties.
partly because not to do so would inter
fere with their pleasure, and partly from
a combination of other motives, all are
natural but none of them creditable. A
successful merchant, well dressed,
pompous, self-important, unused to any
life outside of the counting room. and
accustomed because of his very success
to be treated with deferential humanity,
naturally finds it very unpleasant to go
to caucus or primary where he has to
stand on an equal footing with his
groom and day-laberers, and indeed may
discover that the latter, thanks to their
faculty for combination, are rated high
er in the scale of political Importance
than he is himself. In all the large
cities of the North the wealthier, or, as
they would prefer to style themselves,
the upper classes. tend distinctly
towards the bourgeois type; and an in
dividual in the bourgeois stage of devel-
opement, while honest, industrious, and
virtuous, is also not unapt TO be mira>
Gle of timid and short-sighted selfishness.
The commercial classes are only too
likely to regard everything merely from
the standpoint of Does it pay? and
many a merchant does not take any
part in politics because he is short
sighted enough to think that it will pay
him better to attend purely to making
money, and too selfish to be willing to
undergo any trouble for the sake of
abstract duty; while the younger men
of this type are too much engrossed in
their various social pleasures to be will
ing to give their time to anything else.
1t is also unfortunately true, especially
throughout New England and the Mid
die States, that the general tendency
among people of culture and high edu>
cation has been to neglect and even to
look down upon the rougher and maOlier
virtues, SO that an advanced state of
Intellectual development is too often
associated with a certain effeminacy of
character. Our more intellectual men
| often shrink from the raw coarseness
and the eager struggle of political life as
if they were women. Now, however
refined and virtuous man may be, he
is yet entirely out of place in the Amer
can body polite unless he is himself of
sufficiently coarse fiber and virile char
acter to be more angered than hurt by
an insult or injury; the timid good form
a most useless as well as a most despica-
BILE portion of the community. Again,
when man is heard objecting to taking
part in politics because it is low he
may be set down as either fool or a
coward; it would be quite as sensible
for a militiaman to advance the same
statement as an excuse for refusing to
assist in quelling riot Many cultured
men neglect their political duties SIM
ply because they are to delicate to have
the element of strike back in their
natures, and because they have an un-
manly fear of being forced To and VI
for their own rights when threatened
with abuse or insult.