Norwich bulletin., 1922-06-02
(WrittenS Specially For The Bulletin.O

. ! as the officials elected, and the people get the kind of government they de serve" That extract from recent address by the governor of our neighboring state to New York has set me thinking. After I've been thinking awhile want to talk. What the spirit moves me to, this morn Ing, has little to do with the peculiar |. problems of the farm. Nevertheless, it has much to do with the future of farm CTS, as well as other people. I hope you won't think I'm too far off my trolley if talk a little about politics.
 Not about political parties Heaven forbidi That way lie, if not madness at least unreason, prejudice, misjudg- ment, partisanship, mental obfuscation | and moral astigmatism But about true politics which means the science and art | of government. We're not, all of us, { breathlessly excited over the fate of 'the | party"-either or any party" but we i are, all of us, vitally concerned over the | fate of the government.
 Pretty nearly all of us have sheer | in our tones if not in our actual words | when we refer to politicians. This is not l our fault. It is due to the politicians | themselves. If they have made them | | selves contemplate in the eyes of their |
 
 ! as natural as healthy nasal repulsion | against the odor of the skunk If you turn away from that horrible stench it 1 l is not your nose which is to be blamed, l but the beast which produces the stink. l l If by his trickinesS and his unfairness and his hypocrisy and his manifest self seeking the professional politician arous- Ees popular contempt, he is himself the i cause. The natural reaction is tribute l to prevalent good sense rather than an indication of prejudice against him.
 stiIi. it is a little regrettabIe that there should be such widespread feeling. It is doubly regrettable because, in the nasty generaHzations to which the pub lie is always prone, it leads to a confu- sion between true politics, ie. the science and art of government, and party poli- tics, which is simply the scramble to get lyour man in and keep the other fellows man out. The older grow the more in- tense becomes my disgust with 'prac- 1 tical politics. falsely so-called. Also, the older grow the deeper in my inter est in true politics-in the wise and pru- dent and foreseeing conduct of the peo- ple's affairs, by the people and for the people, as MT. Lincoln phrased it. $ My earliest participation in politics T was in 1880 when, as a junior Wide Awake" with small ojl-skin cape and f flaming oil-fed torch, I followed my big n brother in the parades which marked the campaign for Lincoln's elecAon. Of s course wasn't old enough to vote, but 0 I was old enough to absorb enthusiasm Il like sponge. Since then much water has flowed under many bridges It has been my privilege to know something of the dark ways of practical politicians, ? and something of the ideals of those, who 4 sought to transnnute their tricks into craftsmanship.
 I can talk politics" then, with something more than mere theoretical knowledge of it as it is, and with some thing more than mere visionary's dream of what it should be-
 We are all the time complaining about l the faults and failures of our govern ment, town, city, state or nation. Where in, if we would only stop to think req souably and sanely, we would see that we are just condemning ourselves and our neighbors. For, as Gov. Miller blunt Iy but incontrovertibly states the case, 'fthe people get the kind of government they deserve"
 Has New York city, to take one out standing example. city government which is at once Nextravagant. inefficient, sighting public needs to foster party ad- vantage, pock-marked with jobbery and foul with venality? If so, it is for no ], other reason under heaven than because f that is exactly the kind of government the people of New York city deserve. It is the kind they choose with their eyes open and their choice nnfettered.
 Have too many of the large cities of the country and some of its states gov ernments of a similar sort? It is, in every case, the direct fault of the vot- ing majority. Tn these days of the se- eret ballot, no man is compelled to vote for a candidate unless he approves that candidate and what the candidate stands J for.
 I And that leads me to remind you of t one fact which the last census has made 2 unfortunately too clear for doubt or de- nial. I mean the fact that, in many of the eastern and most populous states | the city population now out-numbers the | rural What does this mean, politically again using that word in its larger and worthier sense?
 Will you, feIlow-farmers, permit me to quote, right here, from Alleyne Ire. lands searching diagnosis of our soeia and political malady? MT. Ireland writes
 "The average voter in large towr brings into politics a mentality utterly different from that of the country vot CT. It is the mind of the property-less wage-earner; of the clerk, of the shop assistant, of the day-laborer of mar herded with other men and profoundly affected by the herd-instinet of a mar of weak individuality of a man who's life is passed in surroundings and fl circumstances where his free will is iperpetually constrained by the contagio1 of an artificial environment" etc, etc
 Did you know that the census of 1s2C showed there were at that time in Nev
 York city only 1.164S3 native-borl
 whites and 4294,629 foreign-bor1 lwhites? Those born in Russia and tn
 Balkan countries alone out-numbered b, half million those born in America.
 Now ana not attempting to set fortl that native-born American is any bet 7 ter than a natiye-born something-e
 He may be or he bay not be. That is
 matter Of opinion. In my own judgmen
 1t is pretty small business to find faul
 with people because they were foreigl
 born All of our ancestors were foreign
 born, for that matter. We're all irnn1i
 grants or the offspring of immigrants
 But 1t is just as true in the growtl
 of humanity as in the growth of a for = est that eAs the twig is bent the tree
 inclined" What Mir. Ireland calls tn mentality" of the city voter Is quite a much shaped by heredity as by environ sS ment The Russian-born immigrant, fo
 instance, comes to us with a mind an
 soul twisted and r1alformed from tn
 mayhens of czarism or the .viler an
 more inhuman tyfazg of bolshevism TE5faY1