Abilene weekly reflector. [volume] (Abilene, Kan.) 1888-1935, 1912-05-16
DAVID MULVANE.

AFTER the nhliOuhi SohfShNA
his service as national committee
man from Kansas. He has made a
record for clean. manly politics that
has given him a place among the
leaders OF the party In the nation
and none stands higher in the party
councils than he. J. =. House, one
of the editors OF the Topeka Capital
gives this character sketch that is
worth producing. so accurately does
lit show Mr.. Mulvanes high stand
ing:
Mr.. Mulvane has been national
committeeman from Kansas since
900. when he detroned Cy Leland
after a fierce fight. Mulvane has
never been very popular with the
reform crowd in Kansas. Probably
the fact that he is an unostentatious
gentleman whose trousers never bag
at the knees, one who had a penchant
for sanitation and clean linen and
who occasionally submitted himself
to the ministrations OF a manicurist,
had something to do with that. The
fact that he was not loud-mouthed.
nor coarse, nor vulgar, never played
to the galleries and studiously re-
Trained from abuse of other Repub-
licans were other weaknesses upon
which the reformers played skill
fully. So sklllfully in point OF fact
that a good deal of sentiment was
worked up against Mulyane and he
has been rather vlciously abused by
the insurgent element of his party.
The writer is not much given to
encomium. But as Mr.. Mulvane re-
cedes from the center of the stage
to the wings a glance at his per-
sonality seems worth while. He was
called boss and machine politi-
clan. In the sense thath believed
in political organization as the per-
manent factor in party's success
and did not rely on rabble rousing
to achieve political ends, he prob
ably was all they charged him with
being. But to the writer, whose
trail has criss crossed that of poll
tics a good many times in the past
twenty years, calling him a boss"
always seemed huge joke. He was
so unlike the conception of that
entity. Mulvane was so modest that
when he arose in a convention to
make a motion he usually blushed
like a school girl. Invariably he
kept himself in the background. The
things he planned were not for his
own personal ACKNOWLEDGMENT, but
for the success of his party or his
faction. He never gave orders or
assumed authority. AS situations,
one after another. developed he talk
ed them over with the boys" and
between them they ground the grist
and formed their plan Of action. AL
ways cool and collected, Mulvane
never lost his poise nor his temper,
and never fooled away his time
"skinning" other Republicans.
Mulvane's theory of political man
agement was to keep the party work
ers interested and to get the young
fellows actively enlisted as soon as
they were old enough to vote. He
believed the fellows who did the
active work were entitled to the re-
wards and he saw to 1t that they
received them. UNLESS you keep your
workers interested" he said once
to the writer, "your party either gets
dry rot or splits off into factions"
Mulvane carried Missouri for Roose-
welt in 1904 and for Taft again In
l190S. In 1904 the national COM
mittee gave him supervision of a
block of states along the Missouri
river. When he told them toward
the end of the campaign that Roose-
Welt would carry Missouri, they
laughed at him. But on election day
IMulvane backed up to the curb with
missouri, and he delivered 1t again
in 1908. He is exactly the type Of
political manager the Republican
party needs now in Kansas and else
. where. He is the kind the party
; will have to have before 1t is square
lily on its feet again.
Just SUPPOSE Grover Clevelant