The Oskaloosa herald. (Oskaloosa, Mahaska County, Iowa) 1885-1919, 1916-10-26
TALKS TO HOME FOLKS
L, L. McFall Now Of Sioux City
Writes Fremont Gazette.

L. L. McFall, formerly of Mahaska
county and we'll known. in Oskaioosa
has written an interesting letter tc
the Fremont Gazette. His message
to home folks" follows:
Sioux City, October IA, 1916.
Editor GaZette:--I am writing you
not in the interest of myself or of any
other man, but purely in the interest
Of fairness. want o say to my
old friends in Mahaska county word
to be much maligned-W. l.. Harding.
IL is human nature to assume that
where there is so very much smoke
there must be little fire; that when
q man is so bitterly and venomously
attacked there must be some justifi-
cation for it. But the more or less
broad opportunity which / have had
In Sioux City to observe Mr.. Harding
himself, and the very excellent oppor-
tunity l have had to observe the way
he is regarded by those who have
known him best and longest, have
convinced me that in his case the JUS
tification for the attacks is very slight
Indeed want to tell the folks
back home that in my honest iudg-
ment however humble that may be,
| do not think wv. l.. Harding is a
bad man; ] think he is a good man;
and that the people of Sioux City
and Morningside,, where he hyes,are
practically united in thinking the
same way. There is some noisy OPP
position to Mr.. Harding even here,
but in spite of that opposition, which
proved to be nearly all noise, he car
ried his own ward and his own city.
overwhelmingly in the election. Let
no one deceive you as to that.
The worse that is charged against
Harding, when all the arguments
have been simmered down, is that
as representative of a wet district
In the Iowa legislature he was not a
radical dry. Putting other consider
aeions aside, no fair-minded man. be
he wet, moist or dry as the Sahara,
could reasonably object to that 1t
is simply another way of saying that
Harding honestly and conscientiously
represented his constituents. We
do not send men to the legislature to
govern us. That is not our Ameri-
can theory of government. We send
them there to represent us in govern
ing ourselves. We decide by the ma
chnery of the majority what we want
done, and then we send men to state
legislatures and to congress to do
matching for us. We do not pick
this man and that man and send them
to Des Moines or Washington with
instructions to go ahead and govern
us according to their own notions
for period of years with the under
standing that wen pick a new set
of rulers at the end of that period II
we are dissatisfied. That is the way
it works out sometimes, but it isn't
the way we intend it to work nor the
way we want it to work. In fact, it
is because of resentment at just this
state of affairs that so many commu-
mites and states are adopting the
principal of the recall, so that they
can apply "the hook" to any public
official whenever he gets the notion
that he is governing his constitu-
ents, instead of his constituents gov
erning him.
The worst that is said against
Harding, | repeat, is that he has tru-
I,r m
he has lived up to his platforms, that
he has kept the faith. 1t seems to
me that that is a pretty good recon-
mendation for any man. 1t seems
to me that 1t would be a cracking good
thing for the state of Iowa to have
q governor who would do that. And,
in view aef the nature of the Iowa re-
PUBLICAN platform, it seems to me
that the drys of this state should be
delighted to have as governor a man
who, according to to his hottest crit
les, has had the 'old-fashioned habit
of doing what he says he will do and
what his platform pledges him to do.
don't believe that any one in Sioux
City thinks of Harding as a wet per-
sonally. His character has never |
been assailed. He is known as a
teetotaler. He is member of the
Methodist church, and his dearest |
enemies in the church admit that !
they have mot a peg on which to hang |
a charge" that would justify his ex-
pulsion. 1t seems to me that the |
very fact that his newspaper detract-
ors refuse to permit any comment |
favorable to him from creeping into |
their columns ought to convince any. |
one with a sense of fairness that the |
case against him is by no means as
conclusive as they would have you |
believe. Take the case of Frank /
Gotch and the Des Moines Register
for example. The Register heard
that Gotch, was supporting Harding.
Thereupon it fred a broadside of
questions at the worlds champion
wrestler, evidently intended fairly to
crush him under its weight, But
Gotch wasn't crushed. He wasn't
even put one point down. He game
hack with a letter as full of unan-
II /