The citizen. (Honesdale, Pa.) 1908-1914, 1910-09-14
COUNTY.
Representative,
II. c. JACKSON.
THE STRENGTH OF GAYNoR.

THE STRENGTH OF GAYNOR.
We note nearly every day by news
dispatches from New York that May
or WILLIAM j. GAYNOR, now on
the high road to old-time pugnacity
and vigor after his recent business
contact with a sore-headed ex-dock
employees bullet, is willing, probably
anxious, to take the Democratic nom
ination for governor of the state of
which he today stands boldly forth
as the most picturesque and promi-
nent figure save, of course, the al
ways picturesque and always promi-
nent personality of THEODORE
ROOSEVELT. We are not surpris-
ed by the New York Mayors tacit
admission that he is ready to try
it. We have believed from the time
he commenced to cause his friends to
say that Mayor GAYNOR thought
he had nothing to gain by term at
Albany that he would ultimately
come out as a receptive if not as an
actually solicitous and aggressive as
pirant for the Democratic nomination
for the governorship-that he would
make it appear in the long run that
the progressive element of the York
state Democracy, if there really be
such a thing, had forced him to make
the race in a year which finds the
Democrats with one admittedly pow
erful candidate and the Republicans
in possession of no man who quite
measures up to the unusual standard
of Gov. HUGHES.
1t cannot be denied without the
boldest and most bullheaded kind of
partisan lying that WILLIAM j..
GAYNOR would make an exceptional
ly formidable gubernatorial candidate
for the New York Democrats to top
their ticket with at the Saratoga con-
vention. He is far and away the
most respectable and even command
ing figure the Democrats on the other
side of the Delaware have been able
to produce since the halcyon days of
GROVER CLEVELAND. He is a
Mayor with an axe for useless and
cumbersome municipal commissions
that gave ignorant, incompetent Tam
many suckers fat berths at $4,000 to
$1,000 a year and no work at all to
render in return for this very COM
Portable compensation; and he has
been a Mayor with a crushing club
for police graft-the hitherto un-
squelchable obstacle in the path of
the city's progress. He won thous-
ands of New York hearts by declar-
ing, the day he went to City Hall to
be sworn, that the people of New
York wanted a reasonably wide open
Coney Island on Sundays and that
he would give them the kind of a
police commissioner needed to open
Coney and keep her open. He has,
beyond all question, made himself
almost immeasureably stronger with
the hero-wOrship crowd-a sickening
but at the same time a not incon-
siderable element in all parties-by
his plucky fight with death after that
shooting mess on board ship at Ho-
boken. If Mayor GAYNOR is ever
to be strong enough to make the AL
bany race he is strong enough to
make it today.
But there is opposition of one very
forcible, even if contemplate kind
to the Albany hopes-which must,
if successful, lead not only to WASH
ington hopes but to Washington
expectations-of the New York May
or. He will be knitted to the burning
day by HEARST and the HEARST
newspapers, crew to be counted be-
low the Harlem. Though the Inde-
pendence League is deader than a
doornail, there are Independence
League men in whose breasts there
still rankles the hatred of GAYNOR
that found birth when GAYNOR, on
the threshold of his campaign, pub
licly gave the lie to HEARST and
received it in return, and which was
intensified by the Mayors terrific at
tacks upon the personal probity of
HEARST at the time the COLAHAN
public works payment scandal receiv-
ed such thorough newspaper ventila-
tion. These men can probably cast
from 10000 to 100000 votes for
some candidate for the governorship