Arizona republican., 1912-10-05
Campaign Contributions

The senate committee lnNeStlSd- tion of campaign contributions has developed no such sensations this week as the people had been led to expect. IL was brought out, of course, that large sums of money had been contributed and everyone knows that an aggregation of large sums is ne cessary to the conduct of presi- dentiaI campaign. It is also general ly known that there is nothing left at the end of a campaign.
 This furore regarding campaign contributions has been melted by demagogues until at last a majority of the people have been led to con found a campaign fund with a cor ruption fund That money has been used for corrupt purposes in political campaigns is not to be doubted, but probably for obvious reasons, presi dential campaigns are freer from such use of money than campaigns affecting only smaller areas. How ever dishonest political managers might be they would regard the task of corrupting enough voters to affect the result as an appalling one
 A campaign gift is a proper gift. Every man who is in business, who labors, who owns property or expects to own property, in fact, every man except the vagrant, the convict and the lunatic is presumably financially interested in the election of presidents or congressman. We believe that con ditions will be affected by the result and that if a majority of the voters can be brought to our way of think inS times will be good. Honest re- publicans. democrats and progressives all believe this. It is manifestly not improper for them to back their be- lief with campaign gifts. It is to them, for the good of the country.
 But contributions to campaign funds are comparatively few. The burden is assumed by men who can afford to give large sums of money and who have an interest in the re suit of the election, similar to that of other men of their political faith, though their interest is proportion ately larger.
 We confess it would look better if campaign funds were made up by proportionate contributions from all voters but that will never be done one party has placed limit of $10,00o on individual campaign contributions, expecting the fund to be filled by small popular gifts which are nat urally not forthcoming. Either the fund will not be completed or much larger contributions will be quietly accepted from wealthy men.
 The acceptance of campaign con tributions from corporations has been senselessly denounced by demagogues to whom corporations" has for years been a word to cOnjure with. Cor pOrations which are composed of men and some of them, honest men with honest purposes, have the same in terest in the result of a campaign that real persons" have That interest relates only to resultant business conditions. It is purer than the in terest of the politician who cares nothing for business conditions SC long as his party is kept in power or swept into power.
 We cannot, of course, defend all campaign contributions and cannot pretend to say that they have not been sometimes made with sinister expectations of reward. Nor can we say that those expectations have not sometimes been realized. But we be- Heve that such cases have been quite rare, that for the most part they eX- ist only in the wild charges of de feated politicians and interruptions demagogues.