Los Angeles herald., 1906-04-16
MEN OF THE MUCK RAKE

IL natn pleaSed our great anu Boou
president, Theodore Roosevelt whose
chief claim to notice is his loud outcrS
for Square DEAL" to emit long and
lengthily a speech denouncing ''the mer
he takes exception to the present era OF
graft exposures. He doesn't like the
laying bare of the rottenness that
hedges about the dealings of the Re
publican party in power with grafters
corporation thieves, plundering trusts
and law breakers generally.
How sincere President Roosevelt is in
his denunciations or how much they
are governed by the defensive attitude
along these lines that his party finds
itself in because of it's tracfficking with
these evils, is matter of conjecture.
That the latter is the true status, most
people are inclined to believe. For
the "muck" claying the heels of the
Republican party Is so extensive that
that party is right now floundering In
regular slough of despond. Hence Its
head must feel called upon to besmirch
those who expose its filth in order to
divert attention from those who con-
taminate 1t.
But will the outcry against the men
with the muck rake lessen the stencil
of the muck itself? Can any amount of
bombast about the men who drew from
them their hypocritical cloaks lessen
the blackness of Chauncey M. DePhew,
Thomas c. Platt, J. Ralph Burton, John
H. Mitchell, Aldrich, Smoot, Quay, Ell
kins and a long list more whom the
Republicans placed in the senate to
disgrace themselves, their country and
their party?
Will any amount of impersonal denun-
citation expiate the sins of the Repub-
llcans who used the stolen funds of
widows and orphans, taken from the
Golfers of insurance companies to elect
the very man who denounces the ex-
posures of that great crime? How about
the McCurdys, McCalls, DePhews, Dry
dens and all the rest of this unsavory
mess, Mr.. President?
Can any reiteration of unconvincing
invective defect public scorn from the
dealings of the Republican party with
the beef barons, the steel trust mag
mates, the Standard Oil robbers, the
coal trust and all the rest of the octopi;
built up and fostered by the Republican
party under tariff that steals bread
ar---thn c
whose ill-gotten gains pay the Repub-
lican campaign bills and keep that
tariff in effect?
Can any number of billingsgate
broadsides put down the stink of rotten
beef served our soldiers by a Republican
war department under R. A. Alger,
now a senator-beef so rotten that 1t
was openly denounced by the very pres
ident who now shouts against the muck
rake he was then "de-lighted to USE?
Can words, words, words" divert at
tention from the odors yet clinging
about Paul Morton, who, while mem
ber of Roosevelt's own cabinet, ad-
mitted himself a lawbreaker and yet
was exonerated and whitewashed by
this same present opponent of the muck
rake?
Are more examples needed? Remem-
ber merely the names of Littauer, the
glove-graft congressman; Barnes, the
woman bouncer, negro aided, now post
master of Washington; Cortelyou, blood
sucker of trusts for campaign funds,
now postmaster general; Deuel., the
Town Topics judge; Loomis, asphalt
besmirched minister to Venezuela; Ma
chin, Heath, Lorenz and the other
Cuban postal grafters; Bliss, the zig
norance" campaign treasurer; Garfield.
the boy trust buster, and so on. Just
recall these-and ponder.
THE men with the muck rake" Aye
more power to their elbows! What
Republican rottenness they have al
ready uncovered smells to high heaven
and even a president hastens to funi-
gate his reeking party record. But
so far they have only scratched the sur
face God grant that they may delve
deep and long; what is yet to come will
he as to what they have uncovered as is
the vileness of charnel house to the
sunshine of a spring dayl