El Paso daily herald. (El Paso, Tex.) 1881-1901, 1901-01-18
Mark Twain
Talks of Reforms :"

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At the city club meeting in New
York last week where the better gov
eminent of New York was the theme
Mark Twain was one of the speakers
and the New York Sun" thus reports
his speech
.'The bishop has just spoken OF a
condition of things which none of Us
can deny. and which ought not to ex-
list, that is. this lust of gain. lust
which does not stop short of the peni-
Tertiary or Jail to accomplish its ends.
But we may be sure of one thing, and
that is that this sort of thing is not
universal If it were, this country
would not be. You may put his down
as a fact. that out of every fifty men
forty-nine are clean. Then why is 1T
you may ask. that the forty-nine don't
have things the way they want them?
I'll tell you why it is. A good deal has
been said here tonight about what is
to be accomplished by organization.
That's Just the thing. it's because the
fiftieth fellow and his pals are organ
lied and the other forty-nine fellows
are not, that the dirty one rubs it into
the clean fellows nearly every time.
You may say organize, organize or
organize, but there may be so much or
gauization that it will interfere with
the work to be done. The bishop here
had an experience of that sort and told
all about it downtown the other night
He was painting barn-it was his
Own-and yet he was informed that
his work must stop; he was non-un-
ion painter, and could not continue at
that sort of a job. Uaughter)
Now all these conditions of which
YOU complain should be remedied, and
I am here to tell you just how to do
it have been a statesman without
salary for many years Qaughter) and
| have accomplished a great and wide
spread good (more laughter). 1 don't
know that it has benefited anybody
very much, even if it was good, but 1
do know that it hasn't harmed me very
much and it hasn't made me any, rich
er. (Great laughter.)
MY first lesson in the craft of
craftsmanship were taken at an early
age. Fifty-one years ago 1 was IA years
old, and we had society in the town
| lived in patterned after the Free
masons or the Ancient Order of United
Farmers or some such a thing-just
what it was patterned after don't mat
ter had an inside guard and an out
side guard, and a past grand warden
and a lot of such things, so as to give
dignity to the organization and offices
to the members. Generally speaking it
was a pretty good sort of an organiza-
ton and some of the very best boys
in the village including-but 1 mustn't
get personal on an occasion like this
Qaughter) and the society would have
got along pretty well had it not been
for the fact that Their was a certain
number of the members who could be
bought. They got to be an internal
nuisance. Every time we had an cleo
ton, the candidates had to go around
and see the purchasable members. The
price per vote was paid in doughnuts
and it depended somewhat on he ap-
petites of the individuals as to the
price of the votes.
This thing ran along until some of
us. the really very best boys in the or
ganization, decided that these corrupt
practices must stop, and for the pur-
pose of stopping them we organized a
third party. We had name, but We
were never known by that name. Those
who didn't like us called us the anti
doughnut party; but we didn't mind
that. We said, Call us what you please
the name doesn't matter. We are or
ganized for a principle By and by the
election came around and we made
big mistake. We nominated one OF our
own fellows and we were triumphant
Iy beaten. This taught us lesson.
Then and there we decided never again
to nominate anybody for anything.
We decided simply to force the other
two parties in the society to nominate
their very best men. Although we were
organized for a principle we didn't
care much about that. Principles
aren't of much account, anyway, ex-
cept at election time. After that you
hang them up and let them season
Naughter.)
The next time we had an election |
we told both the other parties that |
we'd beat any candidate put up by any |
one of them of whom we didn't ap-
prove. In that election we did business. |
We got the man we wanted. l suppose |
they called us the Anti-Doughnuts par |
ty because they couldn't buy us with |
their doughnuts. They didn't have |
of them. Haughter.) Most |
reformers arrive at their price sooner |
OF later (there were queer expressions
On the faces of some of the diners at |
his sentimenD and suppose we would ]