The Black Hills union. [volume] (Rapid City, Pennington County, Dakota [S.D.]) 1889-1904, 1895-12-20
FAIR SHOW FOR ALL
PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTS
TON TRUE GOVERNMENT.
Those Who Have No Voice Il Leglsla-
tion, whose Opinions Are Neither
Heard Nor Needed, Must Feel Discon-
tent-The Majority suffers Also.

VOnC-1u0 M8JOrlCy SuH0TS Also
If proportional representation lis not
made an issue in our state and national
campaign next year, it certainly ought
to be. Our present method of election
is the politicians stronghold. Adopt
proportional representation and he is
routed; his power is gone and the curse
of party spirit is destroyed. If ours is a
representative government, the people
who constitute it must be represented:
but they are not. If an expression OF
choice could be given irrespective Of
party, more than four-fifths of the
voters would declare for the free COIN
g OF silver at the ratio of 16 to 1, and
yet silver has been denied free coinage,
although both the old parties profess
TO be friends of the white metal. It is
the determined purpose of the govern
ment to maintain a gold standard.
n great body of the people desire
many reforms, but there is no way to
reach them by the present method of
nominating and electing candidates.
We call ours a popular representative
government Every symbol of author
Ivy is professedly From the people, by
tne~ people, But every election results
~ the interests of the politicians and
Tue peoples interests are ignored and
uisregarded. 1t is party control and not
peoples control. This is so obvious
aat all but the purblind can see it.
oucn a government is not a peoples
government; it is a government Of the
people by the politicians, for the pluto
crats. Any man who favors it is a
partisan slave, and any one who toll
crates, or is Indifferent to it, is I'M
worthy of being an American citizen.
David Dudley Field, an able jurist on
whose opinion most people rely in judi
clal matters, presents the subject UNI
der consideration as follows:
suppose a firm OF twenty-five part
ners. In. a conflict of opinion thirteen
may rightfully control the twelve. But
at the beginning of the year, suppose it
were arranged that the parties should
be divided into five sections, five of the
partners in each. These sections would
correspond to five districts in our po-
lltlcal partnership. Each section is
now to select one to compose manag-
ing committee of five. This committee
would correspond to our legislature.
Now who. does not see that each one
OF this managing committee might be
chosen by three of the five partners in
the section, and thus the whole five of
the committee would represent only ff-
teen members of the firm, ten, or two
in each section, having voted against
them. But this is not the end. This
committee of five representing only
three-fifths of the firm are nowtto legis-
late for the company. In this legisla-
jority, and they could dictate the whole
business.
FINALLY, as the whole committee of
five represented only fifteen members, a
majority of said committee, or three,
would represent but three-ffths of fiji
teen, or nine of the whole twenty-five
members. Would anything but discon-
tent and dissension, before the end of
the year, come Of such an arrangement?
What would happen in a private part
nership upon SO faulty a system, does
happen, and must inevitably happen, in
a state where a like faulty system OF
government is maintained.
The government of a republican
country must represent the people Or
the people will be dissatisfied. (Not if
they are strictly partisans, and accept
the motto, TO the victors belong the
spoils."O Those who have no voice in
legislation, whose opinions are not
heard or needed, will be FESTIVE under
authority; and it is not the minority
only who suffer; the majority suffer
also from having no proper check, and
when at last the scale turns revulsion is
violent and dangerous.
eff the anti-slavery minority could
have been heard by their representa-
tives, from the beginning, increasing
their representatives as their strength
increased, not only they, but the pro-
slavery majority would have been bene-
flied, and who knows but the emanci-
patton of the slaves might have been
procured through peaceful legislation,
at a cost in treasure, to say nothing OF
the cost in blood, Of less than half the
expenditure of the Wallpaper read
before the American Social Science AS
ISOLATION at Lowell Institute, April 5,
1870.
zone Of the most serious consequences
of existing methods of election is the
foor If throwing away vO11r vote MANY