The Richmond palladium and sun-telegram. [volume] (Richmond, Ind.) 1907-1939, 1920-10-12

LUCY WEBB HAYES, WIFI
He serves his party best who
serves his country BEST
With those watchwords Hayes had
sacrificed himself and his administra-
ton to reunite North and South, to
cleanse the Civil Service and to re-
generate the Republican party. So
quietly. so coldly, so automatically
did he 60 about all those great objects
! that he remained to the end of his
term one of the most misunderstood,
| most underestimate presidents, the
Republican leaders hating him as an
apostate and the Democrats despising
him as fraud.
! He selected one of the most dis
tinguished cabinets in history. But
: he did 1t without consulting party
leaders or considering the claims of
| factions, and the offended senate
| threatened and muttered for nearly
a week before it confirmed the nomi-
! nations. To the disgust of practical
politicians" he threw away" a high
class foreign mission on a man like
James Russell Lowell, "a dashed lit
erary feller," as Senator Cameron said,
and he enraged Roscoe Conkling by
f1inging the political machine of that
imperious senator out of the Federal
offices in New York City. He would
also have made a start toward the
removal of the Civil Service from poll
tics and spoils-mongering had not both
parties combined in congress to thwart
his every effort in that direction.
Hayes boldest challenge to the Re-
publican politicians was his abandon
ent of their 12-year struggle to recon
| Ctrncf OF We cI,
| 1ngton. Ever since congress had
seized from Lincoln's lifeless hand the
control of reconstruction, the entire
proceeding had been a tragic failure,
creating an orgy of corruption and VIC
lence in the South and demoralizing
| the politics of the whole country.
! 1t was an attemp, so common in
this country, so solve by mere politi-
cal methods a problem that was not
at all political. The fatuous polti-
clans at Washington gave the ballot to
the negro in the expectation of set
ting up Republican states in the South
! but they did not give a cent of money
! to educate him to read the ballot and
/ to see that it was counted. They
! gravely invested him with equal civil
rights at law, but they left him econ
omically unequal and a dependents on
| the whites. When he asked for $40
acres and a mule they only laughed
at him. Yet it was the one thing he
needed first of all, and surely he had
earned it by his $3.50 years of unre-
| Quilted toll"
Inevitably the educated and proper
! tied class wrested the government
from the hands of an illiterate and
penniless race in state after state
When Hayes came in, there were only
| two Republican state governments re-
naming in the South, and he promptly
withdrew the Federal bayonets that
were propping up those feeble sur
vivors in South Carolina and Louisi-
ana. Thereupon they collapsed in an
| hour, and their imported governors.
hurriedly repacking their carpet bags,
returned North by the next train.
| Hayes had merely completed the re-
construction Of the Southern states on
Lincoln's plan. Unfortunately it was
too late to make it the same healing
measure that he great emancipation
/ had designed it to be. For unlimited
negro suffrage had been thrust into
the constitution, contrary to Lincoln's
advice. with the evil result that a solid
South continues to plague the nation.
Hayes came to the presidency in the
depths of an industrial prostration.
when wandering bands of tramps
| thronged the highways of the land
| and soon the great railway strike par
alyzed transportation between the At
lantic and the Mississippi. In response
| to the popular cry for more money"
both parties in congress were for re-
| pealing or modifying the resumption
act and for initiating the currency with
greenbacks on silver coinage. The
!, president firmly resisted such a sur
rended. Had not his veto Of the Silver
| bill been overridden' he would have
| saved the country from taking the
| first step on the road that led it to
| the brink of free silver in 1896.
All this independence cost Hayes
the support of the political time sSrv-
ers and the applause of the partisan
press. These united in denouncing
and ridiculing him as a renegade in
politics and as a sniveling hypocrite
in private life.
Both Mr.. and Mrs. Hayes were more
| devotional in their religion than any
other tenants of the White House.
| The day was regularly opened with all
the household kneeling at morning
| prayers, and often the evenings were
given over to the singing of the famil-
! lar old hymns.
The White House went dry" for
| CUT THIS QUILT IS WORTH MONEY
Cut out this slip, enclose with sc and
| mail 1T to Foley &c Co, 1885 Sheffield