Daily Arizona silver belt., 1907-12-14
PRESIDENTIAL HoNoRs
So Far the South Has Shared Equally
 With tho East and West.

Ignoring the vice presidents who
 merely filled out the terms of their chiefs, twenty-one presidents have been
 elected. It is a strange if not sig nihcant circumstance that in those i twenty distributions of the highest
 honor of the nation, the three sections,
 into which the country is broadly di,
 vided. have shared on an absolute equal | ity. The south has had seven presi.
 dedts, the east seven, and the west seven.
 On that showing fortune has been scrupulously fair, and there is no room for fault-finding in the south or in any other section. But that does not honest | ly meet the real point of the southern complaint. While taken as a whole,
 the south has had it's full allowance of presidential honors, no southern man has been chosen now for sixty years, period representing half the life of the government All the southerners were elected in the first sixty years of our national history.
 No southerner has come in sight of the White House since Zachary Taylor, who was chosen in lS4S, and that choice was made on General Taylor s Mexican war popularity and in spite of the fact that he was from the south. He was not identified with southern politics or
 policies, and his candidacy had far more prestige up here than down there. Indeed, he was distinctly suspected of lack of loyalty to his section.
 It was this suspicion which, accord ing to tradition, led a planter to write to him. saying: "I have worked hard and been frugal all my life, and the results of my industry have mainly taken the form of slaves, of whom I own about a hundred. Before I vote for president I want to be sure that the candidate l support will not so act as to divest me of my property
 To this Old Rough and Ready is said to have made reply: "Sir, have the honor to inform you that have been all my life industrious and frugal and that the fruits thereof are mainly in vested in slaves, of whom I own 300 Yours, &c.' With Taylor the line of southern and slaveholding presidents came to an end. From that day to this no man of the south has had a serious chance at the presidency
 ' and the election of Lincoln, the west became the seat of empire. Excepting Cleveland, who was elected by the dem. oerats, and Roosevelt, who was nom. mated by the west as q friend of the west, the east has been under the ban as much as the south.
 Aside from Douglas and Bryan, the democrats have always put forth east ern candidates. Mcclellan, Seymour, Tilden, Cleveland, and Parker were none of them far removed from Man haitian Island. On the other hand, Lincoln, Grant, Hayes, Garfield, Harri son, and Mckinley, all the republican presidents except the present chief mag istrate came out of the midwest.
 In every contest in the republican party that section has shown it's mas tery. Here in the east we are hearing good deal about Governor Hughes as the next candidate. It is question however, if in the west there is yet any serious thought of his nomination in | the coming year. Only most unusual combination of circumstances could ! bring the republican candidacy to New York.
 This sectionalism is not as proscrip l tive in its spirit as it might seem. There | is undoubtedly and unhappily some ac tive prejudice against the east among | western republicans. But to point to that as the animating cause of their preference for western candidates would | not be entirely fair. The choice of !, national convention goes by favor, and it is only everyday human nature for the dominant westerners to pass the honor around among themselves.
 That part of the country is the youngest, and, therefore, very self-eon- seious and eagerly ambitious. When the west shall have grown old and | gouty and had a. satiety of power and preferment, its gorged and indifferent statesmen may toss a president to the | patient east now and then or even to | the long -famishcd south.-Boston Globe.