St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1890-02-12
WHO is RESPONSIBILITY

The North Dakota lottery scheme
proved to be genuine sky rocket. 1t
shot up in a glare and came down in
darkness. Its brief life will serve to
point a moral for the benefit of future
generations, and it will also be remem-
bered as one of the most accomplished
schemes of legislative villainy that was
ever concocted. The chief value of the
incident is to show how quickly and
effectively the public conscience can be
awakened in crisis, and what power
full factor the newspaper is in arousing
the public conscience in the face of i'm
pending danger. The conspirators who
were engineering this lottery scheme
imagined that they had com pletely OBJ
scured themselves and their scheme
from public observation by substituting
the local press and by buying up the
local correspondents for the metropoli-
tan press. They had overlooked the
fact that no first-ciass newspaper estab-
lishment is dependent upon one source
for obtaining news. ALI contingencies
are provided for, and anything of a
news nature must be conducted with
extraordinary secrecy if it fails in time
to reach the lynX-eyed managers of one
great daily newspaper. While the
North Dakota schemers did succeed in
concealing their operations better than
yillainy usually succeeds in It's work,
still the newspapers outside of Dakota
got on to il in time to STIR up storm of
public indignation that swept the in
Iquitous project from the face of the
earth and left its mercenary supporters
doundering in the bogmires of their
own infamy.
There are two or three matters, how
ever, connected with this lottery scheme,
that will survive the wreckage of the
scheme itself. One is the individual
future of the men who stood sponsor for
it; and the other is the share of respon-
sibility the Republican administration
is entitled to bear for the injury that
has been done to North Dakota on &C
count of the unsavory advertising the
state has received in this connection.
The political death of machine poll
ticlan is never the occasion of grief. If
the members of the legislature and the
outside politicians who have been asso-
dug their own political graves, it will be
a fortunate thing for North Dakota.
Men of that stamp are rarely useful to
community. and are perpetual menace
TO the public interests. The sooner they
die out the better. Still, these men
have not been particularly hurt by their
connection with this business, for the
simple reason that you can't spoil a
rotten egg. But, now that their malo-
dorous quality is known to all the world,
they will have to be discarded and
eliminated from the political affairs of
lhe state. And a good radiance it
EilI be.
Yet it is Il more serious matter when
Ee come to examine into the RESPONSE
bility of the Republican state ad minis
tration for the undesirable position
North Dakota is made TO occupy in the
eyes of the world. 1t was within the
power of Gov. MILLER and his associ-
ktes in the executive department to
have aVerted the diSgraceful scenes
that have been enacted in the North
Dakota legislature within the last week.
However we'll the inception and prog
ress of this lottery conspiracy were OBJ
secured from the public, the governor
and the other state officials knew of It's
existence. The Republican organs, in
their anxiety to shield the governor
from censure or criticism. tell a pathetic
story OF how he scorned to accept S10.
go packagr which was proposed to be
left IN his room with the understanding
that If YOU'D never be called for. If
that sbd} b. rue. then that very fact
e0Dvicie iir governor of unfaithful-
Esss g. ,hl1lic trust. Then was the