The Wichita daily eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1890-1906, 1896-04-19

by broad platform, and being out o.
power and with a reputation for hay
ing showered the country with prosper
ity in the past, will probably be sue
cessful.
But no man knows, and there ha:
consequently come over all men, more
or less, the feeling of profound respec
for the mightiness of reticence. An6
with this has come the queer menta
change OF caution, extreme caution
This has not been Americas habit. Il
has been outspoken to frothiness, from
the first shot at Bunker Hill down Il
the present last six years. How re
served we have become nationally is
shown by our recent conduct in the
Venezuelan matter. Half the nation
inclined TO take a supplicating posi-
ton towards Great Britain. When Jay
made a commercial treaty with Great
Britain, Alexander Hamilton, who de-
Tended Jay, was mobbed and beaten
on the streets of New York.
Individually we have become as re-
served. 1t is true there are few agi-
tators. Those that are selishly self
seeking, may win some slight temper
airy victory and come to be hated and
desp;sed later.
The agitator who is not selfish, but
whose mind, in spite of him cries out
against wrong and injustice, will go
down to a speedy martyrdom. The
unselfish agitator will get nothing. If
he seeks Office while agitating, he is
not unselfish, and he will hold the office
if he gets it, but little while. The
unselfish agitator Will at this crisis, be
considered so as long as he does not
seek political preferment, but he must
forever resign the hope of securing any
recompense for his work.
For the man who agitates now must
make many grave mistakes and say
many things that in being extremely vi
cious. become false. No battle was
ever won by mildness and no man can
be extreme and secure popular emolu-
lnent and popular respect in the Amer
lea of today.
Having weighed all this carefully the
politician has become a sphinx. The
unseltish agitator sees martyrdom
ahead of him and closes up,and the
professional and selfish Office-seeking
agitator, waiting for some popular
wave to ride him into preferment, is
abroad in the land, tearing the circum-
ambient air with false fever and pre-
tended passion.
Meanwhile the great public is quietly
wondering what it can and shall do
and above all is saying nothing. 1t Is
also reading the newspapers as much
as it listens to the agitatorS, taking the
utterances of both with an astounding
amount of GOODNESS and frigid allow
ance. The newspapers vary in their
Utter they must, because
it is their business, and it is refresh
ing TO note that the newspapers that
are not afraid to speak appear the
more prosperous.
The newspapers which daily deceive
their readers, which declare things
which their readers, having daily Wis
ual evidence TO the contrary know TO
be lies, are the newspapers that will
soonest go into the hands of the sheriff
and thence to the hands of the banker
or moneyIender who has enslaved
them.
And so there has come over this coun-
try in the last year profound reti-
cence in regard TO real issues among
the people which is only broken by the
that are not afraid to speak
and the professional agitators who are
Haunting the actual wrongs that exist
and proposing fool remedies for the
sake of getting some slight regard for
themselves during popular frenzy.
But the statesmen of this country are
silent and the people at large, with the
rapidly increasing stay-at-home vote
with them, are simply waiting, fearing
to breast the savage whirlpool of an
epOchal change, which like an equinoc-
tial storm, is pitilesS in its annihila-
ton.