Waterbury evening Democrat., 1904-11-03
SCHEMES UNDER WAY.
Republicans Making Efforts to Elect
 Senators and Representative.

Republicans Making Efforts to Elect
 Senators and Representatives.
 While it might appear that the can-
 dfdates for the senate and house of
 representatives are doing nothing to
 help themselves, this is by no means
 the case, especially on the republican,
 side of the house, where a strenuous
 campaign. as NIT Roosevelt would say.
 is being conducted in tue interest oh
 H. H. Peck, l.. N. Blakeslee and Sam
 uel Marsh. At the coming session of
 the general assembly an effort will be
 made to secure legislation which win
 insure party supremacy for the repub-' licans in Waterbury for years, and to
 do this it Is considered necessary that
 Waterbury should be represented i1A the senate and house by men pledged to give loyal support to anything their party wants, whether 1t IS for the public good or not The question
 uppermost in the minds of nearly all the republican politicians at the pres- ent time is. What can we do to hold
 what we have and acquire more?" All of them are sharp enough to see that if the employing of public officials COIL tinues in the hands of the taxpayers there is great danger of change and they propose to guard against that. 3hey don't want the people who pay the freight to have anything to say about the selection of the stock. In other words. they are not willing to be judged by their conduct and run their chances of holding the reins of gov ernment purely OH the score of merit. The aim is to get hold of something and cling to it in spite of all protests. The position taken by many members of the present city administration is i'll line with the attitude of extreme labor advocates who claim the right to take charge of mans business, hire his help, fix the schedule of wages and regulate the number of hours his eTn. ployes shall work, and the funny thing about it is that men who are back of the scheme to tie the hands of their neighbOrs are very pronounced i'll de nunciation of the methods of men who assume to dictate to others. 1t is sur- prising how quickly men experience change of heart. When the present ad ministration came into power some body asked one of the leaders Why so few of the democrats who had been associated with the previous adminis- tration were retained. The reply was that that had been talked over and that the decision arrived at was that such course was not desirable, be- cause no matter how valuable or well meaning man might be who was closely identified with the preceding administration, it would be difficult to get him to harmonize with q new order of things, and that reforms could better be worked out with all new men, The explanation was a. very good one, but now the same party be- lieyes. or says he does, that 1t is an excellent thing to carry along several members of the board from one admin istration to another so that projects undertaken by one administration and not completed before it's term of office expires may be OH hand to continue the original policy and explain to the new men the real purpose the admin. istration that has been retired had i'll mind. The first mentioned position is by far the more logical. If the. inten- tion is to place responsibility, why should a mayor and his administration be obliged to continue in office heads Of departments and other officials not in harmony with their ideas and proba- bly wholly incompetent to perform ths work required of them? We hear a great deal about the advisability Of conducting the city government on tho same plan as the factories. where new superintendent and board of di- rectors are given full swing. What board of directors would think of hold ing the superintendent of mill re- sponsible for the success of the concern provided the different foremen and certain number of the help were not only independent of him, but strongly opposed to his methods? No superin- tendent who knows his business would accept a position on such conditions. and no board Of directors would ham. per him in this way, because it would be contrary to sound business princ1> ples, and vet most of the people who favor this scheme for Waterbury would be the very first to oppose it i'll their own personal affairs. It is simply q game of politics, the itch for office, not the good of the community. that prompts legislation of this sort. When a public official or a man in private position knows that he cannot De reached by those who pay him he gov erns his conduct accordingly, and So long as he pleases certain parties he need not and rarely does concern him. self to any extent about what effect his acts have upon the great mass of people. Nobody has fault to find with the corps of teachers in the public
 a schools, but very few care to see any of them made fixtures for life. All of them got the positions they now hold from boards chosen by a popular vote of the electors of this town and the fact that those who are not satisfied with the existing state of things claim that the teaching force Ill the schools from the superintendent down is of the kind that deserves to be retained indefinitely, is pretty good proof that the system under which they were se- lected is not bad. The politicians should let the schools alone and trust to tue whole people to come together once every two years and elect mem bers of the department Of education ill the usual way.
 Some of our neighbors are appalled, at the large school registration, while others regard it as a healthfrl sign of the times. The race suicide theory has nlv iY, WafaTh11yvs and