Evening times-Republican. [volume] (Marshalltown, Iowa) 1890-1923, 1906-11-08
the RESULT IN IOWA.

Cummins will be governor OF iowa
for another term and the railroads VIII
not have the influence within the re-
publican party which they might desire
TO exercise. AS governor, Mr.. Cum
Minis will continue at great personal
sacrifice to lead fight which has been
waged now in Iowa for nearly eight
years, to bring party politics into the
peoples own control and to eliminate
the power Of such representatives OF
special interests as the late Judge
Hubbard, Mr.. Blythe, the notorious Ed.
Hunter, and their like.
But, when the morning issues went
to press on election night an editorial
could not have been prefaced with the
assertion that Cummins had been elect
ed. in fact, the returns then indicated
his defeat, and it is safe to say that
many thousands of Cummins admiring
citizens feltt heir heart descending to
their boots Wednesd~y morning when
they read their papers and realized
their own guilt in staying away from
the polls because they were busy and
were confident. Many and many is the
time that the man who stays away
from the polls is the real menace to
his country, and this was one of them.
A study of the returns by counties Will
show that the Cummins republicans
. who staid at home in the normal
Cummins counties were sufficiently
numerous to lose the governor 10000
of his rightful plurality. Added to this
the wholesale boiling of anti-Cummins
republicans in those counties where the
bitterness of factionalism had over
ridden mems reason, and the result
came most dangerously near being
disaster. The shock should prove in
structive.
A disaster not because some other
In the future as governor. The editor
of the Times Republican has heard
Governor Cummins plead with his
friends to find some expedient that
would save him from this war and two
more years in an office which he is not
financially able to occupy without
great personal loss. But disaster be-
cause a movement for free politics in
Iowa would have been crippled. Less
than a week ago one of the foremost
republican statesmen in Iowa public
life told the Times-Republica that he
had been satisfied that the railroads
had planned on the day of the August
convention to wreck the ticket from
governor to constable, and then to set
about building upon the, ruins by Ca
with the representation that all pre-
ferment in future politics rested with
those who lined UP with. the railroads.
Pilgrimages 10 Burlington would again
have taken the place of nominating
conventions and great would be the re-
publican party.
=,
timent for the progressive movement
would not have been destroyed, but,
the hopelessness of the struggle, as
evidenced in the defeat Of so strong a
man as Cummins, would have deferred
men from leading in the fight. With
out leaders any movement will die.
These are things which a narrow es-
cape should bring home to those Cum
Minis republicans who remained in
their corn fields or their stores and
permitted county after county with lit
tie or no real dissension, to lose from
500 to 1000 of its normal republican
plurality.
If men generally could only be made
to see the persistent, never ceasing
struggle of the great corporate inter-
ests to control political parties nomi-
nations, patronage, legislation and
United States senators, and If he could
be made to realize the terrific cost of