Wausau pilot. [volume] (Wausau, Wis.) 1896-1940, 1910-06-07
Stop-Look-LIsfsn

~~O~~
decline in popular confidence in any
particular political party, nor is
there such an uprising as to carry
the belief that there is a widespread
desire for placing another political
party into power. There has been
however, loosen;ng of party ties
and gradual decline in political
party allegiance. The whole ten
dency of the times has been to cul-
tivate individual political independ-
ence, and this tendency has been
stimulated and played upon by self
seekers with fulsome promises, and
fostered by the disorg AIMING infiu-
ences of the direct primary law.
Instead of a party with well defined
issues and principles and with candi-
dates representing such issues and
principles and responsible to the
party, the primary law instead of
giving to the individual voter
greater or more direct influence
has removed the candidate and
official from all supervision or re-
sponsibility to party. The candi-
date no longer answers the call of
party; he announces himself and
his platform; he files his nomination
papers, conducts his own campaign,
and if successful, believes he has
elected himself and is responsible to
no one. Under such conditions the
character and caliber of the candi-
dates for Office as a whole have de-
terioriated. The best men for
official position have, as a rule, not
that initiative nor that desire for
public Office to cause them to be-
come placehunters, solicitors for
signatures to petitions and votes at
the primary. To men of real ability
and who have demonstrated special
fitness of the qualities for response
BILE public service and who might be
persuaded to answer the call of a
convention as a matter of public
duty, the humiliating lowering of
ideals, the requirements and ex-
pense imposed under the primary
makes Office seeking and Office hold
ing repugnant. The result there
fore is, that the great body of
candidates for Office under the
primary law is made up of men who
would hesitate long time before
announcing their candidacy were
they compelled to submit their
claims for public favor to conven-
tion chosen to select the candidates
as representatives of party princi-
piles and for whose official conduct
the party would be held responsible.
The primary law has loosened party
ties, party responsibility, and taken
away all semblance of the candi-
dates being the representative of
well defined issues and party princi-
Piles; it has substituted the faction,
the clique, the pseudo statesman
whose chief stock in trade is denun-
citation, impractical theories and
assurances of cure-olls; it has made
the demagogue and the plethoric
pocket-b book the sign-manual and
SINE Qad non of the successful poll
tician; its effects have been demon
alizing in lowering the standard of
our people; the muckraker poses as
an uplifter To have built up an
industry,-to have created, to have
acquired, to have accomplished, and
to differ with the impractical and
unjust theories of the political
reformer is to incur enmity as the
representative of the systeD,-an ex-
ample of the grasping interests.
And what return have the people
received for all this? They have
been holding the bag-they have
paid the freight. New issues are
continually being coined to keep up
the amazement, to make them for
get unfultilled promises and unre-
deemed pledges; but there has been
nothing of actual accomplishment
while taxes have become more
burdensome and the cost of living
grown higher. The people are
gradually coming to a realizing
sense that these phrasemongers
have been playing upon their Gre
dulity in their desire for better
things. They are awakening to the
simple startling fact that all the
functions of government are served
,chsR one Is prereatea from doing the
other and when the administration
of public affairs is conducted in the
most economical and conservative
manner. The people are learning
learning fast-that the man who
has successfully conducted his own
business is better custodian of the
public interests than the man who
has been failure in everything
else except in playing politics and
holding on to public Office.
1t is rather a startling revelation
to come to a realization that for
accomplishment in public affairs you
require men whose training and
labors have built up the character
istics and essentials that have re-
suited in accomplishment in the