The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1905-04-11
COUNTING MANY CHICKENS


President Roosevelt has been inau-
gurated but a little over a month
and already the news reports are full
of plans and movements to determine
his successor. There is the very liveliest
interest in an event that cannot take
serious shape until more than three
years have passed. Senator Fairbanks
has taken his literary bureau out of
the refrigerator and is working it at
full force under pressure of liquid air.
Secretary Taft at a public banquet
dominates Senator Spooner as the next
Republican candidate: and the senator,
to avoid repetition, dominates Taft for
the supreme bench, although it is really
understood that the presidency is his
ambition and the desire of his friends.
Out in Ohio where he belongs. how
ever, Senator Foraker is getting things
into line; and so it goes through all the
states wherever there is man who has
chance, or thinks he has chance or
has a friend who thinks he has a
chance for a nomination.
This tendency to start one campaign
before another has fairly ended is a
concomitant of the growth of political
parties as business organizations and
of the increasing and enormous use of
money in national campaigns. 1t is an
evil sign and tendency; and those who
are ready to avail themselves of it are
catering to the lowest force operative
in modern politics. The manipulation
of the electorate in this country has
proceeded far. They are coming to be
managed with ease. and the nomination
of man by popular pressure and his
election because he is the real choice
of the people, while these things still
happen, is becoming more and more of
rarity. 1t will disappear as soon as
organization as now planned and car
ried on is fully completed.
One needs but to read carefully such
studies in modern political life as have
been presented by Lincoln Steffens in
McClure's Magazine for year or more
past, and articles like that furnished
by John Gilmer Speed to Harper's
Weekly, showing how the entire state
of New York can be and is regularly
bought at each election, to see wherein
fast stiffening into a system of bust
ness control based on cash. The Re-
publican party, having the funds to
spare, is the chief offender; and there
fore the Republican nomination is look
ed to with increasing confidence as 4
guarantee of success, because it will
come down with the stuff.
The worst of it is that really able
and high minded men shut their eyes
to the details of this system, while they
do not refuse to profit by its operation.
Investigations in Wisconsin, for in
stance, have shown that, while Senator
Spooner would reject with horror any
corrupt deal, and while there is no
man in the country personally freer
from reproach, he does not hesitate to
become the political beneficiary of a
system built upon the liberal use of
money at the polls. Theodore Roose-
welt has a high personal idea of honor
and urges purity in politics; yet one
finds in reading Mr.. Speeds detailed
figures and experiences of the last
campaign that voters in New York
state were bought like sheep for the
Republican candidates, and no one
could remain ignorant either of the
facts or of the evidence before his
very eyes that enormous sums of money
have been contributed and were spent
to carry the state for the Republican
ticket.
These are the reasons, unmentioned
but potent, why men are planning long
beforehand to secure a nomination
which they believe will be made good
by an enormous campaign fund. 1t lies
with the people to disappoint this ex-
pectation by rising in revolt against
the concentrating of American poll
tics and American institutions: and
sending to Office everywhere candidates
of their own choosing not forced to the
front by any bureau or any machine,
and relying upon the unpurchased sup
port of free people.
not a society man. You misconceive