Watertown republican. [volume] (Watertown, Wis.) 1860-1906, 1897-10-06
One OF La FolIetta,s Reforms.

Under the head OF Caucus Reform,
The Milwaukee Sentinel thus ably
and fairly discusses one of M. La
Follette's schemes for the betterment
of politics.:
Under the plan urged by Mr.. La Toilette
both caucuses and conventions are to disap-
pear. A Republican Democratic voter,
going to the primary election of his party, will
find himself supplied with an Australian bal
lot On which are printed the names Of certain
candidates for nomination. These candidates
are the men whose petitions or calls have been
signed by certain number of voters belonging
to their party. And the candidate who gets
the greatest number of votes at the primary
election will be the party candidate.
Put this plan into execution, says Mr.. La
Toilette, and "you will destroy the machine,
because you destroy the caucus and the con-
vention through which the machine controls
party nominations" Is so much as this quite
certain to follow the adoption of Mr.. La Fol
lettes plan? The machine, one would suppose,
might conceivably circulate petition for the
nomination of it's candidate, get the workers
and their dupes out in force, and carry the
be as sure as Mr.. La Toilette is, and as he
would like his auditors to be, that this task
will prove beyond the strength of the machlneF
In asking these questions we do not intend
to imply preference for the existing system.
No sane person denies that this system often
works badly. All we ask for is light. Under
the present system 'the will Of the people"
frequently finds no expression in the nomina-
tions which convention makes. This is gen.
orally because the people, at the time when
the caucuses are held, has will of its own
The voters are mostly lazy and Indifferent, and
the organized force which knows what it
wants, and will work hard to get what it
wants, carries the day. We do not feel sure
that indifference and laziness, if they should
continue after Mr.. La Follette's suggestion
we're adopted might not still prove helpful to
an energetic machine. Therefore, as long as
we are not sure of this, we cannot help envy
ing Mr.. La Follettes certainty that the ma
chine would be destroyed by the adoption of
his plan.
But it would be very silly, merely because
one thinks Mr.. La Toilette too sure that MS
remedy will do such wonderful things, to re-
main blind to the need Of some remedy. Take
New York for example, or Illinois. The pass
age of the Yerkes street railway bills by the
Illinois legislature, and their approval by Gov.
Tanner, had many of the signs of a scheme
prepared long before. Of course it is possible
that Mr.. Yerkes applied his powerful argu-
ments after the nominations were made, and
the election over. But it is almost certain
that none of the Yerkes Legislators would have
been nominated, and quite certain that Gov.
{o1 OF
the moment of selecting delegates to the nomi-
mating conventions every voter had understood
what he was about. As for New York, though
it is not absolutely certain that Mr. Platt was
not the choice of majority of all Republicans,
it is highly probable that most of them did
not want him to go to the senate, and that he
never would have gone there if the Republican
voters had been able, when the legislative
nominations were making, to take look into
the future. These two cases, in our opinion,
are instances of what is called the triumph of
the machine. The voters, as soon as they
came to realize that they had will of their
own, found that they had permitted the nomi-
nation of men bent defeating this will.
The remedy for machine rule, in our judg-
ment is to make voters so active, wide awake,
determined and farsighted that they will in
sist upon the nomination of intelligent and in
corruptible candidates. We do not know
whether this be a possible remedy. But in
fairness to Mr.. La Toilette it must be said that
| discussion of his plan for caucus reform is
! likely to do an immense amount of good by
making the voters sit up" by making them,
some of them, ashamed of the laziness and
incapacity which make possible the manipula-
ton of caucuses and conventions. We should,
moreover, like to believe that under the sys-
tenn which he advocates the number of lazy
voters would be smaller, and we should be
grateful for reasons for this belief.