The Richmond palladium and sun-telegram. [volume] (Richmond, Ind.) 1907-1939, 1907-04-05
CHAPTER XVII.
Scarborough.

scarborough
Now came the problem-tc elect
We hear much OF many wonders oil
combination and concentration of in
dustrial power which railway and tel
egrapb have wrought. But nothing is
said about what seems to me the
greatest wonder of them all-how
these forces have resulted in the con
centration of the political power OF
upwards of 1900 900 of our Is, 900 .00O
voters; how the few can impose their
ideas and their will upon widening
circles. out and out. until all are in
GUIDED The people are scattered :;
the powers confer. man to man. day
by day. The people are divided by
partizan and other preiudices; the
powers are bound together by the
one self-interest. The people must ac-
cept such political organizations as
are provided for them; the powers
pay for, and their agents make and d.
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 lucrative employment of all kinds,
and material and social advancement
everything that the vanity or the ap-
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-
tiitionally and they never forget where
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 l had outgeneraled
him. he opened negotiations with the
national machine OF the opposition
party. He decided that. if | 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
6uential Of the managers of the ma
fional machine of the opposition
party, submitted several names to
him. He selected Henry J. Simpson,
Justice of the supreme court of Ohio
his brain spun full in every cell
with the cobwebs of legal technically.
He was. in his way, almost as salts
factory a 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 Of affairs? They
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 '-that is,
would not modest the two packs Of
wolves, the business and the politi
cal, at their feast upon the public. He
came of a 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 oId-fashioned rural whiskers,
fhickest 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. l 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 I |
had cured myself of the habit of wor- |
Goodrich and Beckett succeeded in /
getting Simpson nominated by the op-
position l should have hard fight to |
raise the necessary campaign money |
The large interests either would /
finance Simpson. or, should / con-
vince them that Burbank was as good |
for their purposes as Simpson. would |
be Indifferent which won
j directed Silliman to work for Run
die of Indiana, a 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
had not been in public life. he would |
have been a camp-meeting exhorter
Crowds liked to listen to him; the rad
icals and radically inclined through
out the west swore by him; he had
had two terms in congress. had got
hundred-odd votes for the nomina-
tion for president at the last national
convention of the opposition
splendid scare-crow for the Wall |
street crowd SUIT difficult to nominate
over Goodrich's man Simpson in a
convention of practical politicians.
In May-it was t>s afternoon of |
the very day my mutineers got back
into the Unconstitutional asked me |
jf | would see a man he had picked |
up in delegate-hunting trip into In
diana An old pal of mine. much
the better for the 12-years wear since
j last saw him. He has always