Martinsburg herald. [volume] (Martinsburg, W. Va.) 1881-1920, 1907-06-29
CHAPTER XVII.
Scarborough.

]
| We hear much OF many wonders Of
combination and concentration of in.
! dustrial power which railway and tel.
| egraph have wrought. But nothing 10
said about what seems to mel the
| greatest wonder of them all-how
! these forces have resulted in the con-
| centration of the political power of
| upwards of II 900 900 of our IS, 000. 900
voters; how the few can impose their
ideas and their win upon widening
| circles, out and out, until all are in
! cluded The people are scattered.
the powers confer. man to man. day
/ by day The people are divided by
partizan and other prejudices: the
powers are bound together by the
ons self.interest The people must &C
cept such political organizations as
ara provided for them; the powers
| pay for, and their agents make and di.
/ rect, these organizations. The people
| are poor; the powers are rich. The
| people have not even offices to be.
! stow; the powers have Offices to give
|
and material and social advancement
everything that the vanity or the APP
| petite of man Graves. The people
! punish but feebly-usually the wrong
persons-and soon forget; the powers
! relentlessly and surely pursue those
who oppose them, forgive only after
, the offender has surrendered uncon-
i1xv vtbo
1t is to their interest to remember.
The powers know both what they
want and how to get it; the people
know neither
Back In March, when Goodrich first
suspected that | had outgeneraled
! him, he opened negotiations with the
national machine of the opposition
party. He decided that, IL should
succeed in nominating Burbank, he
would save his masters and himself
! by nominating as the opposition can
didate a man under their and his
control and by electing him with an
enormous campaign fund.
Beckett, the subtlest and most in
fiuential of the managers of the ma
tional machine of the opposition
| party, submitted several names to
him. He selected Henry J. Simpson.
| justice of the supreme court of Ohio
| a slow, shy utra-conservative man,
his brain spun full in every cell
with the cobwebs of legal technicality.
| He was, in his way, almost as salts
| factory candidate for the interests
as Cromwell would have been. For,
while he was honest of what value is
honesty when combined with credulity
and lack Of knowledge or analrs? Iney
knew what advisers he would select,
men trained in their service and
taken from their legal stats. They
knew he would shrink from anything
radical or disturbing" is,
would not modest the two packs of
wolves, the business and the politi-
cal, at their feast upon the public. He
came of line of bigoted adherents OF
| his party; he led a simple retired life
among sheep and cows and books
asleep in the skins of sheep and cows.
| He wore old-fashioned rural whiskers,
thickest in the throat, thinning to-
ward the jawbone, scant about the
| lower lip, absent from the upper
| These evidences of unfitness to cope
with up-to-date corruptionists seemed
| to endear him to the masses.
! AS soon as those big organs of the
opposition that were in the control of
the powers began to talk of Simpson as
an ideal candidate, | suspected what
was in the wind. But had my hands
full; the most | could then do was to
supply my local left bower," Silliman,
with funds and set him to work for
candidate for his party more to my
! taste. 1t was fortunate for me that |
had cured myself of the habit of wor-
rying. For it was plain that. If
! Goodrich and Beckett succeeded in
! getting Simpson nominated by the OPP
position | should have a hard fight to
raise the necessary campaign money
| The large interests either would
I finance Simpson, or. should l con-
vince them that Burbank was as good
/ for their purposes as Simpson, would
/ be Indifferent which won.
| / directed Silliman to work for Run
| die of Indiana thoroughly honest
man, in deadly earnest about half a
dozen deadly wrong things and cap
| able of anything in furthering them
after the manner of fanatics. If he
4 had not been in public life, he would
/ have been a camp-meeting exhorter.
! Crowds liked to listen to him; the rad
4 icals and radically inclined through
/ out the west swore by him; he had
4 had two terms in congress, had got
hundred-odd votes for the nomina-
/ ton for president at the last national
convention Of the opposition. A
/ splendid scare-crow for the Wall
street crowd but difficult to nominate
over Goodrich's man Simpson in
convention OF practical politicians.
In May--it was the afternoon of
! the very day my mutineers got back
/ into the harness-Woodruff asked me
! If | would see a man he had picked
~ .,..