The Hawaiian star. [volume] (Honolulu [Oahu]) 1893-1912, 1906-10-25
The straight TICKET
CONTINUED from Page oneJ.

He is not I'm politics for principle; he
is not even I'm politics for politics; ne
is u politics for business. He wants
something to sell, something for which
in certain quarters there is demand,
something FOR which a. certain few will
pay high-that is, special privileges. He
knows that as soon as a sufficient num-
Der of men have become partisans, UNI
varying voters of straight tickets, they
need no longer be reckoned with; they
can be depended upon to do the same
thing every time over and over again
like performing bears-that is, they win
always vote one way. They have vo-
unfairly disfranchised themselves,
eliminated their own personalities. and
they no longer count. He pays in
deed, little attention to them save as
now and then he permits the more pro-
minent of them, i'm their capacity of
eminent citizens to serve on honorary
committees and superfuous boards, and
when he deems it eXpcdient to create a
diversion, he allows such men to be of
the two hundred honorary vice-presi-
dents and sit gravely on the platform
while the Congressman from the ad-
joining state glorifies the party re-
cord. Thus the partisans become like
the Dead Souls i'm Gogol's novel, and the
boss, like Tchitchikof, can put them
up and sell them to the highest bidder.
The boss, as one of them told us.
| knows his business" SO long as the
great mass of voters are stupefied by
partisanship, and are clinging to the
superstitions of party regularity, and
go about expressing themselves only
| in dead phrases just so long does the
boss know that he can control-nay, be
the government of the city He knows
that he need only dominate the CEN
tral committee to have the party eau
cuses and the party conventions at his
mercy. Then he puts the names of
certain men on the ballot, and those
persons who have DISTINGUISHED them
selves will Inevitably vote their straight
ticket, and formally, legally elect the
man he has already chosen for them.
! And now in order to establish more
firmly his oligarchy on the ruins of the
/ democracy its own members have des-
trOyed he advances another step: he
! has his legislatures recognize parties in
the laws, where they never were entitled
to recognition. Third parties, indepen-
/ dent movements, become difficult al
most impossible and new hypocrsies
and new frauds are perpetrated; the
/ farce of Bipartisan" boards appears
election boards and what not-a whole
vast paraphernalia and complicated
machinery, enormously expensive to the
/ people but providing many new places.
About the same time he deVises g
new and most convenient form of bal
lot-that is, convenient for him and for
the party autOmatons-and as if no
opportunity for hypocrisy should be
overlooked he calls it the Australian
system; though it bears no resemblance
to anything Australian except, perhaps
the dOdo. He prints the names of his
nominees in columns, and over each
column he prints the picture of a bird
an eagle, a rooster, a buZZard, some -
times, in irony, perhaps, a bird of prey
and thereafter the party-man need ex-
| ercise no intelligence whatever; the
boss has made provision against every
possible accident and contingency, even
partisan paresis. The human organism
which was once a free man needs only
the ability to recognize a given bird
when he sees it and put a cross under
that bird, To such base and disreput-
able depths has partisan politics sunk
IN Ohio, for instance, that campaigns
have been waged and won on the cyni-
cal cry alone: Put your cross under
the eagle and let it go at that"
Saturday Evening Post.