Tazewell Republican. [volume] (Tazewell, Va.) 1892-1919, 1906-11-15

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and methods. AL. Adams, the policy
king, was a faithful husband and devot-
ed father, brought up his children ten
derby, lavished on them many of the
thousands he filched remorselessly from
the pockets of the poor and carefully
kept them in ignorance of his business.
John Y. McKane, the Coney Island boss
and ballot-box suffer who wound up in
Sing Sing, was a model family man and
superintendent of Sunday school.
We prefer to judge Mr.. Hearst not by
what his friends, dependents and hired
men say of him, but by what we see
that he does. We know that he has
done more to degrade journalism and to
make it nasty, repulsive and dangerous
than any living man, with the possible
exception Of Joseph Pulitzer. He has
sent young women to walk the streets
at night to describe the sensation of be-
ing insulted, into disreputable haunts to
write stories of what they saw and
heard there. He has encouraged men
to lie and bride, to SANDER, to infict
irreparable injury on helpless persons to
make sensations and sell his newspaper.
These things are not matters of opinion
or for dispute. They appear plainly in
his newspapers day by day and year
after year. No further back than last
Wednesday his newspapers sold in this
city announced in glaring letter, filling
half the first page, Hearst, by so, 900. "
This was manifest plain lie intended
to deceive the public and to swindle peo-
pie by inducing them to buy the papers.
1t could not have been done without Mr.
Hearst's consent and connivance. 1t is
one instance of ten thousand which
might be cited if there was time, space
or need. What man has done more to
debauch public sentiment and taste, to
cater to the lowest and most vulgar and
depraved curiosity, to destroy the char
acter of the men and women who make
such stuff as he prints and of those who
read it?
That is Mr. Hearst's record in his
own business. The vast majority of So
Der and self-respecting newspaper men
dislike him for the same reason that a
reputable lawyer hates a shyster, or a
respectable physician is at deadly feud
with quack or capable actor is irri-
tated by ham. All of US instinctively
resent the degradation of our own pro-
fessions, vocations or trades.
In politics Mr.. Hearst has used his
own newspapers to puff himself in most
fulsome terms, to advertise and pro-
claim his own virtues, to strike his enc
mics and opponents, regardless of truth,
propriety or decency. We do not be-
lieve that gentleman with the ordi-
nary gentleman's instincts of modesty
or justice could do this or would do it
for any purpose or possible reward. His
other methods are equally bad. AS we
look at it, he is a man of no unusual
abilities or qualities and has attempted
to force himself into place and power by
the brutal force of money lavishly ex-
pended. He hired cliques at the st.
Louis convention of 1904 to cram the
galleries and shrek for him, to try to
intimidate or impress delegates, sent
there to deliberate and select the leader
for great party, with the idea that he
was the choice of the people. The evil
dence of that was plainly before the
eyes of the thousands of men gathered
there. Shrieking continually through
his newspapers for purity and justice in
politics, he organized this year little
cliques of coarse and corrupt politicians
to secure for him the votes OF counties.
At the State convention he and his
friends deliberately threw out the dele
gates justly and legally elected from
Kings county, and substituted for them
hirelings or partisans of his own. Howl
ing always against corporations and for
open and plain dealing, he has intrench-
ed himself behind labyrinth of corpo-
rations for his newspapers so that it is
almost impossible to make him respon-
sible for wrong he has done or to force
him to pay his just debts.
These are all plain, known, visible
truths, and in view of them, we confess
we cannot admire Mr.. Hearst, even
though his followers are as devoted as
Elijah Dowie. We regard Mr.. Hearst
in journalism and politics as a counter
part of Dowie in religion and finance.
We have no doubt, however, that Mr..
Dowie could come before the country
with string Of endorsements as long
as his leg of the purity and beauty of his
character and purposes and of the sane
tity and loneliness Of his home life. We
prefer, however, to form our own opin-
ion of Mr.. Dowie from his pnblic ca
reer, just as we do of Mr.. Hearst.
Very likely Mr.. Hearst is SO intensely
vain that he believes himself to be
great man, so morally obtuse that he
believes himself a good one. He lives
in an immediate atmosphere of fattery
and poses himself to look and do as his
hired flatterers tell him, and it happens
often that man may deceive himself
L II L. L. L.