Los Angeles herald., 1910-08-16
ELECTION DAY

OF California are alive TO the Crisis
in their own public affairs and the
stigma that has come upon their state
through corrupt machine rule.
What this means and how far the
brief extract from the Saturday Even
ing Post, published in Philadelphia
and having a nation wide circulation
of 100000 copies. 1t is not a polit-
ical paper and its words are so much
the weightier for that fact. This is
what it has told its vast army of
readers-and it's all true
For forty years California, po-
litically speaking. has been an as
set of q railroad whose creatures
have been put into the legislature,
in congress and on the bench.
Then, looking upon our election in
a broader way, as part of the great
er movement called insurgency, the
paper says:
The contest in California is es-
sentially the same contest that
other states are waging-to drive
predatory business out of politics.
The question, therefore, is whether
California has the manhood to meet
this question and decide it in the way
it should be met. There is no mis-
understanding the issue. There are six
candidates for governor. OF these only
two have had the temerity to so much
as mention by name the Southern Pa
cific ompany-Johnson, Republican,
and Bell, Democrat. One other, Curry,
who is expected to lead today in Nor
thern California, has thought the mat
ter one for jest and said that if he
is elected governor he will not "eat
locomotives for breakfast" We may
miss the exact subtlety Of his humor,
but suppose he means he won't run
amuck and hurt either corporation or
people.
Mr.. Stanton, the Los Angeles candi-
date, has made not very creditable
style of campaign and is an unfortu-
nate episode of the campaign, because
he has no strength above the Teha-
chapi, and below can only draw sup
port through his personal friendship
from Johnson. Mr.. Stanton's argu-
ment in substance has been this:
'"Those fellows up state have been
soaking us unfairly; elect me and I
will turn the batteries on them" Mr..
Stanton has not dropped word indi-
eating that he feels the campaign has
the slightest moral aspect.
OF the machine candidates, Mr.. An
derson is perhaps the cleanest polit-
ically. He has made a dignified,
though colorless, campaign under the
special patronage of the machine gov
ernor, Gillett. Anderson has never
done anything very bad but he feeds
through the same quill as the ma
chine bosses. Curry has a large per-
sonal followink. He will get the race
track element and liquor crowd al
most to a man in San Francisco. Her
rim prefers his success, but dare not
openly say so. What the machine is
hoping is that the urbane Anderson
will draw many of the respectable
element from Johnson up north and
the doughty Stanton will shout the To-
cality argument loud enough here to
accomplish the same thing. and Curry
will slip in between the lot.
How this machine politics, having
its fountain head in the office of Will
liam F. Herrin in San Francisco, ram
ifies into the smallest sections of the
state we have shown; how it tries to
get legislators to choose its kind of
United States senator and pass only
such measures as will help it crafty
its lust for power and wealth. how it
tries to elect delegates to county con-
ventions so that it may control the
state party machinery and send dele
gates to the national conventions of
both parties; how it puts it's henchmen
in county offices so that 1t can con-
troll the enforcement of the law and
put its servants to work on the public
pay roll; and how it even picks county
officers so that a boss like Parker can
feather his nest from the dead, as in
the case of the coroner's office.
A peculiar phase of the California
campaign has been the effort of the
Republican state central committee
controlled by Herrin, who is a Demo-
crat, by the way to read out of the
party all who did not get the stamp
of regularity from that committee.
They have not succeeded in frighten-
ing anybody any more than their pro-
totypes in I-ansas did. There the in
surgents captured the party control
and are now the regulars" That
the same thing will happen here
today is generally believed, though it
will turn on the victors and In the No
Vember elections stab them to death
And this machine control goes still
further. It has for many years picked
the congressman. In this district the
Hon. James McLachlan has ever been
subservient tool of the oligarchy
represented by the Southern Pacific,
Cannon and Aldrich and their tariff
for the benefit of corporations manipu-
lated in Wall street for the skinning
of conhding investors, the lambs of
the street, and the enrichment thereby
of the men who juggle the securities
they can give any fictitious value, be-
cause the law of supply and demand
has been killed for their benefit.
For many years Mr.. McLachlan has
faithfully served this plutocracy. If
Cannon and Aldrich are more blame
worthy it is only because they were
IT, .+,or,,o, ,,,iydc that led tho pI,,Y,