Newark leader. ([Newark, Ohio]) 1917-1946, 1920-03-26

postmaster Genefal pOlClclan.
1t gets US nowhere. We would be a
whole lot better off if we candidly
admitted to ourselves that our one
political job is to pick out our favor
ite team Of politicians, old or new,
and vote for them at voting time.
The mass of US have never taken any
effective part in political organizing,
and hope it is no treason to democ-
racy to confess that | see no reason
to believe that we ever will. We are
the referees and judges of the con-
test, not the contestants.
Ny crouch against the present con-
testants who manage the two old par
ties is not that they are professional
managers-which | think they have
to be-but that they follow certain
un-American principle of govern
ment. l hope it is un-American. 1t
is the principle of government by one
class. 1t is the principle of monopoly
of political power by one class. 1t
ic the principle of the governing die
tatorship of one class.
We are so used to it that We can
hardly see it. When a political ma
tional committee meets, we do not
even notice its utter lack Of all true
representation of wage-earners and
Of all true representation of farm
ers who really toll. And when this
committee issues a warning to US
against class-party of wage-eamers
or of toiling farmers, we do not real
ize that we have been handed a wit
ticism. We look solemn and are i'm
pressed.
In the same way we are perfectly
serious when Congress and the Presi-
dent propose that certain quarrels be-
tween labor and capital shall be ad-
justed by a committee in which the
deciding vote shall be cast by "neu-
tlal" who is named by the Govern
ment. We fail to see that the Govern
ment, being class government, al
ways names this neutral" from
among the people who dine with en-
ployers and not from among the peo-
pie who eat supper with artisans. We
think that it is quite natural that
"neutrals" should be virtually invari-
ably chosen from one side of the So
cial fence.
Certain wage-earners, however, and
certain farmers, with a acute sense
Of humor, are beginning to laugh at
this show. Their unruly conduct
seems to me to be the true body of
all effective present political discon-
tent. The objective of that discon-
tent-if it is ever to reach any OBJ
jective at all and ever to achieve any
genuine result whatsoever, must be
the total destruction Of the blind and
reckless one-class power which is
evidenced and exercised by the ruling
groups of both old parties in America
to-day.
Perhaps the ruling groups will
change into all-class groups. Or per-
haps we shall have a new all-class
party. Or perhaps-in the end
through refusals of compromises-we
shall see a new one-class party of
wage-earning and farming producers
ranged against the old one-class par
ties of persons who will claim to rep
resent business. In any case we are
brought to our present state of trou-
BILE and uproar and danger by one
class politics in both old political or
ganizations.
We are an intelligent and decent
people-we Americans-in all classes
at any rate, fondly think so-and
yet we are now among the worlds
ablest practitioners of the Russian
recipe of curing society's intestinal
disorders with covering blankets of
censorships and jails; and we have
fallen into the almost continuous
habit of landing American troops and
losing American lives in foreign parts
in the course of unauthorized and un-
constitutional wars on behalf of prop
erty; and we are now we'll on our
politically CREASED way to invading
MeXicO where there is oil in the
name of bloody murder, although
there have been more Mexicans mur-
dered in the United States than
Americans murdered in Mexico.
The test of an American all-class
party would be that it would restore
the spirit of free opinion at home and
respect the spirit of free self-deter-
abroad. 1t would want
for America and be
willing to let Russia have Russianism.