Arizona republican., 1918-07-03
Now that we are in the war the shortest way out is forward.
 David Starr Jordan.
The Giants cf Those Days

Speaking of old and time legislatures, of the superior ability of the members of the former that is something that may easily be explained. Among the men who were in Arizona when the territory organized, and for some thereafter, there were few weddings. The fact that had made the arduous journey prima facie evidence of strength of body, character and purpose. Why these men had may have been interesting but mma- teral Perhaps in the of one, it his antipa thy the peculiar shade of the hair of the sheriff of the county from which he had emgrated. In the of another, perhaps, ailment of the trigger finger. chronic nervousness of that member. had induced him to seek relief in a change of climate. Others may have broken down in health becouse of great assiduity to the task of famiarzing them selves with different styles of penmanship.
 The spirit of adventure brought many. Others came because they wanted more room. Still others were swept in on the backwash from California. The gold hunters. stockmen desiring virgin oppor- tunty But there nothing here to invite the moycodde.
 These heard of one another. One of them in Tucson quickly became familiar figure In Prescott There were so few of them that all of hem were known by reputation to all the rest Probably when the first territorial legislature was convened there little time lost in getting ac- 1uainted. The members the foremost men of the territory. There university men, there were those intense students of human nature known gamblers. There brilliant lawyers, men who had held high positions in which they had ougrown. The old journals of the early legisa sures show that the business was conducted by men who knew how. The journal proceedings of the assembly for day, of which session we have now forgotten are in Latin
 good many things done that should not have been done but in tho early legislatures traceabe rather to careessness in money matters rather than to corrupt intent There very little concealment. The "Theving Thirteenth" does not that that legislature was composed of thieves that actual crooedness had been perpetrated. The members handled the affairs of the territory in the large and off hand way in which they handled their 
 The high grade of the territorial legislatures was maintained until the middle the late ninetes. The foremost men of Arizona were proud to sit where such men Hiram Stevens. Groom. woolsey oury, Hardy. and other leaders had sat. As late as the Seventeenth and the Eighteenth the membership was still galaxy There were John C. Herndon. Major Doran, Judge ". IT, Barnes. Foster Dennis Peter B. Brady. Harry Carpenter and long array dead. There were such men W. c. Barnes. Judge William Lowell, and a very few who yet remain.
 We have never quite understood why the later territorial legislatures fell quality after the middle ninetes, but after the Eighteenth there were fewer and fewer of the territorial leaders They de- clined places which appeared to have been dvested of their odtime honor. We have suspected that they felt that the legislature, institution, had been suled by reports of wholesale corruption in recent sessions. The railroad companies and the mining companies had been active and while only few had been smrched, one session came to be known the Mule" and another as the "Tinhorn" No of off felt olov of the session referred to by it's popular name The sentiment thus awakened was quite different from that stirred in old member of the "Thieving Thirteenth" Men who had been doing things rightly wrongly, in large way looked upon their smirched successors in office pkers.
 There still able in the later territorial legislatures but the of the first grade were inclined to hold themselves aloof.