Omaha daily bee., 1894-03-25

may understand it's operation and so that
any one of ordinary sense can direct it's
Publicity is therefore one of
the essentials for party machinery, and it
should never be hidden or placed in a corner.
Secret societies in politics are therefore the
bane of party and sooner or later political
organizations succumb to them, as did the
Wing party in the United States when Know
Nothing lodges gained control in it's councils.
LOCAL, STATE AND NATIONAL POLITICS
SHOULD BE SEPARATED.
Simplicity, next to publicity, is the es-
sential element in political machinery, and
therefore in the United States local, state
and national politics should be separated.
1t is true that one party banner, one general
set of principles. should and must control a
great party; yet its operations in the county
should be largely Independent Of state con-
troll, and state campaigns should be divorced
as much as possible from national committee
influences. The people, as a whole, are too
jealous of liberty, too prone to criticism and
too fond of publicity to, for any great length
of time, consent to the rule of 1.-The ma
chine" The independent and the mug
wump, the most useful elements in political
life, are too strong, too vigiiant to make
government by the boss" a permanent in
stitution. The man who cannot read this
truth in the light of recent political events
in local and state politics in the Empire
state of the union, ought to buy himself a
new pair of political spectacles. The fact is
that there Is a leayen which goes with the
proper use of political machinery which Is
certainly working among the people, for and
in favor of sound principles and good govern
ment, while the seeds OF its own death, the
elements of early dissolution, always accom-
pany machine politics and bring about It's
ruin. Its very selishness, the narrowness
of its rewards. the monopoly of office, the
concentration OF power, the growth or ILL
gotten wealth, become so apparent that the
very exercise of 1t sows enemies by the
score, and they multiply until they reach
hundreds and grow until, becoming resistless
thousands, they fall upon the machine and
crush 1t.
MACHINE POLITICS DENOUNCED.
That alongside wholesome, useful political
machinery we will always have more or less
machine politics is az certain as that we
shall always have fieas IL we have elephants,
worms If we nave fruit. but he is a pes
simist indeed who fears that the flea will run
off with the elephant or that the worm
will destroy all the orchards. Machine poll
tics In its methods and results is so opposed
to public interest. so injurious to real party
success, so repugnant to the intelligent self
interest Of the voter, that its enemies
spring up almost as rapidly as mosquitoes
do In August in a Jersey swamp, ana the
influences which are at war with 1t are not
only patent, as We have so recently seen,
but as permanent as are the foundations
OF our schools and churches. Today we are
rapidly approaching an epoch when the sup
port OF party machinists will be fatal TO a
candidate, and the very suspicion that he Is
the creation of the bosses will defeat a man
at the polls and rob him of confirmation
in our senates. 1t is only when In the midst
of a struggle for existence that a great
people tolerates without protest the con-
tinued domination of the machine, and even
II its apparent power seems to linger long
after and to occasionally show alarming
vigor, 1t is only the display OF pride and
the unwise exercise of power which goes be-
fore It's fall and which insures its ruin. AS
machine politics feeds and fattens on public
plumber, and as the power and profit OF the
boss depend almost entirely upon his
actual or supposed ability to control nomina-
lions and TO secure appointments, IL Is easy
to see that IL II is once recognized, as IL
soon will be, that a machine nomination
tends to insure defeat. one wing on which
the boss rises will be clipped, and with
a proper civil service system the control OF
appointments will be wrested from him for
good. and his power for evil will be as
small in TERRESTRIAL politics az is that OF
Lucifer In heaven. The citizen. then, who
condemns machine politics, who abhors the
machine itself and fears the boss. should
lend his aid to every movement which has
In view the divorce of the civil service from
politics: as today the power to control APP
pointments locally in the state and In the
nation is the last crutch upon which the
boss hobbies, Knock this from under
him and he falls to the ground as helpless