The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1897-01-20
MAY, MISS
THE MARK.
The Present State Administra
tfOn and the POpulists
In Danger of Losing Sight of
1he Ideal
Which Was the Cause of Their
Being in Existence.
NOT TO GIVE OFFICE.
The People of Kansas Elected
I I'M For a Purpose
Deeper and More Profound Than
Deeper and More Profound Than
Some POpulists Imagine.
LOUD CATERWAULING
Of Despicable Seekers After
Place and Pelf,
May Soon Turn POpularApprOv-
al to Popular Disgust.

There has never in the history of the
state of Kansas been such scramble
for office as there is at present. 1t is
estimated that there are fully $500 PIE
hunters in Topeka, who are spending
from. two to. five dollars day while
waiting for something to turn up. The
hotels are crowded, and people are
sleeping on the floor, on lounges, in
chairs, and on cots spread out in the
halls, parlors, and Hobbies. The
scramble is disgraceful, many men
paying out more for hotel bills than
they have earned in six months. Many
of them are farmers who should be
boxed up and sent home before they
are robbed by the professional pol1tl-
cians.-Atchison Globe.
An Atchison man who went to Tope-
ka yesterday says he found sixty men
in the line waiting to see Governor
Leedy. Hundreds of men are bum
ming around Topeka spending money
they should pay on account at home
The Populists will make a failure of
their administration if they pay too
much attention to these men.-Atchison
Globe.
The above is more or less true.
Will the present state administration
en- mplify the deep feeling that surged
through Kansas all last summer and
resulted in the overturn of established
ideas and ideals, or will it shrink to
the level of mere office getting and Of
flee filling and become a byword as
every administration preceding it has
done for many long years. 1t is posi-
BILE that the men who have been pushed
to the surface, seized from the burrows
from the village street and workshop
and dragged to the summit of public
fr-11C do a0f 1irrR
that they would never have been there
were it not for a deep unrest among
the people, breakup of old ideas, a
crashing to pieces of old doctrines, a
hatred and contempt of old methods
Do the men who now hold the reins
of power know that the people did not
hurl down the old gods and set up new
ones, merely to provide offices for an
other set of men? Are they going to
fall in the mire of place getting instead
OF bearing LUMINOSITY in their inner con
seriousness the knowledge that they are
part of an evolution of human thought?
What do we see in Topeka now? Hotels
boarding houses, flats and lodging
rooms crowded with creatures from all
over the state They are not here dis
cuSSing what are the great moving
thoughts desires and hopes of the mil
lion and a half of Kansans who with as
lofty ideals as those of the crusaders
turned Kansas from the old path to a
new and untried road.
The people of Kansas like some of
the tribes of olden times feel that they
are a chosen people. Bearing the
brunt of malediction as Kansas always
has, from the benighted, the ignorant
the cowardly, the slavish. Kansas has
thrown out the banner of human pro-
greSs, and she proudly and defiantly
waves it aloft in spite of the shafts of
ridicule and hatred aimed at her from
the battalionS of allied greed and in
humanity.
1t is a worthy ideal that leads Kan
sas forward, but do the gangs of petty
scheming, CONTEMPLATING, often half
drunk office seekers that surround the
state administration, plucking its gar
ments. screeching and whining know
or feel this ideal?
Are not the governor and his assist
ants in the midst of the Changing of tba
cymbals, the fanfarronade of gones tba
mutations, the outcries the desperate
rush. the scramble and tearing Of gar
ments of the mob, in danger of becom-
ing confused and losing sight of 1vbat
was meant by that mighty sween Of Nc
htical forces that tossed them into
grea tness?
The entire genius of the campaign has
already well nigh been swallowed mn
by the vast, surging sea of place b,,nt
ers. The people did not ask nv tbeir
suffrageS that jobs be provided for tba
long-haired men and short-haired wo-
men who have Surged into TODelxa On
'transporta tion,' as their railroad
brides are euphoniously termed. The
people are already beginning to he
heartsick and angry with the sight
now presented in Topeka. The COVER
nor, who is the exemplification the
head and forefront of this section of a
great movement for the regeneration of
the race, may already begin to grow
faint at the awful onset of selfish and
nuprincipled men. Stronger than he
nave fallen before such a charge He
needs the iron nerve, the impassiye de-
termination the almost superhuman
bravery to shout: by the Eternal. the
good that the people of Kansas have
delegated me to do shall be donep'
Governor Leedy has the greatest OBJ
portunity any citizen of Kansas ever
had to become great. The public well
coined his installation into the COVER
nor's chair Even his political oppo-
nents have been charmed into the he
lief that something good and worthy
is TO be done for the people Often as
the masses have been fooled by political
promises, there has been a sense plain