The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1889-10-22
WHY DEMOCRAT.

President Eliot, of Harvard College,
made a speech a few days since at the
banquet of Boston's leading Democratic
club. 1t was in some respects a signif-
can't speech, and, in n regard, simply
infamous. Since 1884, President Eliot
has been a mugwump. He was counted
a mugwump until the banquet. There
he declared himself a Democrat, and
took occasion to denounce mugwump-
ism as illogical, since II of the two
great parties must control the desti-
MES of the country. Acting upon
this theory, the President of
Harvard fell back into the arms
of the Massachusetts, Democracy, whose
controlling element is located in Boston,
and whose most redoubtable leader, two
years ago, owned two grog-shops-the
Democracy, sixty Of whose members
held a meeting, recently, for the purpose
of promoting the congressional aspira-
tiOns of Hon. John l.. Sullivan.
One of the reasons which President Eliot
gave for joining the Democratic party
"a tlat Al LtCpuDii~oh al 10 hOpC-
lessly committed to the heresy of pro-
lection, while he believes in free trade.
This open declaration of his reason for
joining the saloon party in Mass
achusetts is doubtless honest,
but it is said to have been
received with significant silence by
those party leaders who know that it
will not do for the Massachusetts
Democracy to make an open avOwal of
its hostility to the doctrine which is the
foundation of the great prosperity of
that State. But President Eliot is q
Democrat because he is a free-trader.
One other reason which President
Eliot gave for his utilization with the
saloon party is that the Republicans are
Unfortunately pensioning everybody
who claimed to have been a soldier in
the late war, and that it appeared to
him that it "mattered not whether
the applicant was wounded in
battle, or claimed to be suf-
fering from catarrh contracted twenty
years after he left the service, he was
pensioned." The dignifed president of
Harvard then proceeded to facetiously
remark that If the veterans of the late
war were to be pensioned because of age
and inability to labor, he was in favor of
a law which would put all ex-officials,
~ex-teachers, ex-literary men, and nearly
everybody whom age had incapacitated,
upon the national pension list.
The president of the most renowned
institution of learning in the country
seemed to believe that he was expressing
a witticism, and was relating a huge
joke to the Democracy about him when
he cast this aspersiOn upon the honor
and patriotism of every soldier of the
late war, but patriotic people who do
not o in the delicately refined circle
in which President Eliot walks will
stigmatize his sentiment as a SANDER
and an outrage. To-day more than
twenty thousand veterans, most of
whom served their government faithful
ly, are in the poor houses of the coun-
try, mainly because they are unable to
earn their bread. Thousands more are
maintained by private charity. All of
these men, sitting in the shadow of neg
lect, and feeling keenly the pinching
touch of positive perjury, have a claim
upon the American people which will be
allowed unless gratitude has ceased to
be a virtue. President Eliot may not ap-
preciate this fact, and because he does not
he becomes O Democrat; but the great
mass of the people do, and they will see
to it that their claim is recognized.
Patriotic men all over the North will
say: "Shame upon the president OF
Harvard Colleges" but those who have
been watching the drift of the leaders
of that institution for the past ten years
are not surprised. They import their
teachers of political economy; they
assail American institutions, encourage
snobbery. and are largely responsible
for the anglomaniacism which pervades
a certain set about Harvard and where
Harvard influence is felt. To put it in
a Western sentence, Harvard College
has become an English dude factory
1t is a'good place to keep American boys
out of.