The Harrison times. (Harrison, Boone Co., Ark) 1876-1938, 1904-01-16
owhOse chOleeP"

49, - - % - AaAANS NNAAFT
and "the choice of the people"
| am only exercising the preroga-
tive of an American freeman by ris-
ing to ask the question "Whose
ehoiee2' and of what people? Peo-
pie who put up this bundle of fault
and fat and expect me to support
him don't know me, nor do | want
to know them. | have been buneoed
and know my business. Well then,
whose choice is he? Certainly not
the choice of the honest toilers bat
Ting for bread for their hungry
broods.
Surely no man can be the chosen
standard bearer Of a people,h he inn
poverished by political extravaganza
or of a Inundated yeomanry whose
industry and commercial greatness
never met a superior on this planet.
He is not your choice, nor my
choice, but he is the idolized chosen
of the idle aristocracy of the dollar
wise men of the East, who are put
ting this so-called sage to the
front, by whom they hope to con-
struct a golden altar upon. which
they may once more sacrifice the fl
nancial independence of seventy mil
lions of Americas freedmen and re-
duce them to the merciless lash of
England S money lenders. But how
ever bitter supposition of Cleyeland's
nomination, the reality will be to
me the essence of gall. This be-
comes almost. uncomfortable in the
light of the truth that we need ae-
cept no man for our leader who car
ries into his official life the least sus-
picious desire to- pander to the pow
er of Mammon; for we have able
men in plenty who have openly de-
clared war on corruption of what
ever kind and wherever found. We
can find men right here in Arkansas,
who, if put at the helm of our ship
of state, would drive every piratical
craft from our political seas, or sink
them beneath the waters of infamy.
But it seems to be an established
habit that we must bow without
complaint, and support whatever
choice it pleases Wall street to make,
without regard to qualification,
without guarantee of faithful service
or competence; and when 1t is all
over he can enter upon the duties of
fishing and hunting, and dabbling in
every dirty deal that guarantees the
price of another investigating COM
mittee, and spend the rest of his
puppet at the heels of foreign
snobs and corporated plutocrats;
and standing up in public gatherings
and filling the suffering poor with
political puffs and promises until
their poor, lank stomachs are gorged
with his gallant gall
These Wall street politicians are
the wingless buzzard that collect
around political stink holes of cor
rupt politics, and afterwards stand
up at plutocratic gatherings under
the auspices of advanced political
clubs and spew their fetid vomit in
to the lap of responsibility.
These men are political lights that
are stalking through our courts of
justice with wads of greenbacks, the
price of corruption, as their certi6-
cate to charter membership to the
judiciary farce that is dredging the
world for gnats with seines of barb
wire, while carnal criminals are es-
Gaping through mosquito-bar play
nets.
These men are the pot house poll
ticians who have always been re-
sponslble, in great measure, for the
extreme social conditions that more
than once within our national life
caused the fires of war to breed and
blaze in human hearts; whose wan
ton waste and needless strife trans
posed our happy homes to haunted
huts and laid waste our fields of
plenty over a naked desert of wretch
ed poverty.
There may be and doubtless is
goodly number of advanced polite
ians who favor Mr.. Cleveland's adj
vent into the campaign now APP
preaching but they do not consti-
tute majority even Of that element,
to say nothing of the social and in
dustrial element whose number, by
fair and honest count, will be found
sufficient to retire Grover Cleveland
to the shoreless sea of oblivion.