The weekly examiner., 1901-07-20
SOME MORE THOUGHTS ON
 DETROIT CONFERENCE.

reform paper that COnSldeIS the Detroit social and political confer ence as failure. Not attributable to faulty management, 1t says, but due to the faulty nature of the thing itself.
 But the principal reason suggested for the impossibility of the success of such a gathering, according to The Public, is in the smallness of the number of reformers, even should they all unite into one party, com pared with the great mass of the peo- pie at large not influenced by re- form thought of any kind. Public opinion must be influenced in favor of a reform, to make 1t win; and public opinion cannot be in- Auenced permanently in favor of a mere mess or reform pottage."
 Just so. and this should have been the main design of this conference the discussion of ways and means to influence the public with reform thought, and then the inauguration of some practical plan of campaign to that end
 But we are not inclined to believe that the conference began in mis- take, as alleged by The Public-if such were the real motive of the con- vening-" the mistake of supposing that reforms are to be accomplished by union os reformers of all shades and colors." We can see no "mis- take '" in that philosophy. For a uni6cation of ref0rmeys is the first consideration. By this unifcation power and prestige is secured to ac- complish much more than can be reasonably hoped for by the process of working apart and the exhibition of petty strifes and bickerings of ridiculously impotent contending factions.
 Suppose, for instance, t that the wisdom of the assembled members of this Detroit gathering should all be concentrated on the launching out of reform press, cooperative in character and with the means behind | it to force 1t into millions of homes in the land where a reform thought now never enters, wouldn't that be a long stride towards the influencing l of public opinion in the way it must De enfinencsd 6efoTs TefoTns Nay be lexpected to come. And from all ac- counts there were men and women at that meeting with ample means to do this very thing;syet if not with plenty of others throughout. x the country ready to support them in Such a movement were 1t only for initiated But there was nothing seen at the conference to indicate that its con ception contemplated anything de6n- ite whatever--the unifcation of re- form forces or anything else. This matter was only once openly referred to and suggestion offered as to how it mi ght be accomplished in a way Involving no surrender of convictions of individual or organization or merging of principles in political platform, but no attention seemed to have been paid the proposition@fo1 1t elicited no response whatever, How ever, privately, 1t could be seen that
 whenever the matter was mentioned 1t met with warm acquiesence and endorsement
 But, as referred to last week, the failure of this Detroit conference laid in the numbers and personnel of the gathering rather than in any, thing else Not that there were not the right kind of people there for genuine conference, but that there were too many of them, with too many of another kind whose forte lay in oratory and passionate decla- nation rather than formative thought and cool, deliberate reasoning, and readiness to accept the good thoughts of others as we'll as to present their own.
 It has been suggested that the at- tendance at this meeting wasn't as large as at that of Buffalo two years before, and that many of those who fl 1nrred 1rorain artl1r in tha fret failed