The weekly register. [volume] (Point Pleasant, Va. [W. Va.]) 1862-1909, 1904-11-02
IS THE NATIONAL TREASURY A CAM.
PAIGN MONEY CHEST?

Judge Taft, the Secretary of War,
and Mr.. Luke Z. Wright, his success
sor as Governor of the Philippines,
have been telegraphing to one anoth-
er, at an expense of several thousands
of dollars! They did not cable one
another on public business. They ca
bleds one another in the interest of
President Rooseyelt's effort to be his
own successor. Their object. was to
reply to statements by Judge Parker,
the candidate against Mr. Roosevelt,
touching matters in the Philippines.
Those cablegrams cost the people of
the United States large sum of
money.
We note these facts to call attention
to the negligence of honor by high Of
ficials and to the apparently low tone
of public opinion. A political cam
paign should not be financed out of
the United States Treasury. The mon
ey in the Treasury was taken from all
the people ito be used for all the peo-
pie. 1t is not Republican or Demo-
cratic money. 1t is the money of the
people of the United States. 1t was
not taken from them in taxes, to be
used to elect one party and to defeat
the other. In this instance it is being
used for just that. The only difference
between that and embezzlement is in
the fact that the law against embez-
Element has not been extended to meet
this form of embezzlement.
. The Eagle does not believe that
Messrs. Roosevelt, Taft and Wright
would pick the pockets of a private
citizen. They have, however. used a
large amount of the money belonging to
all the citizens for the purpose of aid
ing the interests of one citizen, who
seeks the Presidency for another term.
Manifestly Messrs. Roosevelt, Taft
and Wright have no more Justification
for charging the Treasury with their
campaign kilograms than they would
have to send their laundry bills to the
Treasury, with instructions to pay
them. The wrong they have done is
less significant than that state of par
'tisan mind in them which prevents
them from realizing that they have
done wrong.
Grover Cleveland, when President
of the United States, paid out of his
own pocket every cent which his per-
sonal kilograms cost and every cent
which his subsistence on any Govern
ment vessel cost. All his Cabinet did
the same. James Buchanan and his
Cabinet did the same. They made no
parade of the fact. The fact itself
only came out as an involuntary re-
suit of hostile Republican examination.
The disclosure is worth bearing in
mind now, when men as honorable as
Roosevelt, Taft and Wright, in their
personal affairs, are found to be sad
ding the National Treasury with the
expense of cablegrams, half way
round the world and back again, in
the interest of their continuance in
officei
We suppose the Republican press
will call this personal attack on ex-
allied men. Well, 1t is fact. The ex-
allied men did it. We have used only
facts they themselves furnished. If
the facts are an assault, so much the
worse for those who created and made
use of them for their own interest
The exalted men did not eXalt them
selves or their example by what they
have done, and by which they seek to
benefit themselves. ria,
Alton B. Parker and the Democrat
ic party cannot finance any part of
their campaign out of the public treas
ury. That should not lose them the
votes of men who believe that the Ma
tional Treasury should not be, or be
made, party's money chest. The in
sensibility of Messrs. Roosevelt, Taft
and Wright to the fact that what they
have done is wrong should be a rea-
son for sentencing them to private
life long enough to enable them to re-
aliZe the offenSe, the danger and the
scandal of using public money in the
interest of their partisan and personal
mbttion.-Brooklyn Daily Eagle.