Newark leader. ([Newark, Ohio]) 1917-1946, 1923-02-23
LIMITING RIGHT TO VOTE
(By John Bush)

now requires, they are endeavoring
to promote a proposition that would
tend to create discord in the United
States and would not be productive
of any good so far as the action, as
a whole, is concerned.
Supreme Court Justice Alphonse T.
Clearwater, in his recent address be-
fore the state bar association, among
other things said the right to vote
should be limited by intelligence tests.
He further stated that the immi
grants from southeastern Europe
were mongrel poletariat that has
shunted America from it's former
ideals. If such a statement is correct
then we Americans have reasons to
be alarmed, for if the influence
welded by the intelligent American
is waning to the extent that few
illiterate people from a small corner
of Europe have such influence that
American ideals are disturbed we are
in a deplorable state of intellectual
status.
People who have kept abreast with
the trend of times and affairs as re-
CARDS government are we'll aware
that American ideals have been set
aside and selfish mems aims have
been promoted in lieu of those prin-
ciples upon which our government
was founded. But to say that a
minority Of ignorant foreigners are
the cause is folly. Just what the
learned Mr.. Clearwater considers a
just intelligence test as regards a
persons ability to vote intelligently
would be hard to conceive. Learned
men and newspapers have been
Haunting that same threadbare argu-
ment in the face of the people for
years and thousands are led to be-
lieve that it is the ignorant who must
be deported or imprisoned if Amer
icas ideals are to be pronlted. His
tory furnishes an abundance of proof
that it is the learned who are re-
snonsible for the conditions that have
in the past and do yet exist IN all
nations. A small minority have al
ways been the leaders, and those lead
ers have been and are yet the elo-
ouent orators, and eloquence cannot
be acquired by the illiterate.
Pericles, Alexander and Julius
Caesar, the greatest of them all in
the days of golden Rome, owed their
success as leaders to their ability to
sway the masses by their knowledge
of the essentials of elocution and the
use of it.
Thus, when the question in sum
med up, in the last analysis, If
Americas ideals are to be maintained
the limiting of the right to vote is
not the essential factor, but the attl-
tude of the writer's and orators as
regards those ideals. Ignorant for
eigners have little or no knowledge
of the activities of the American
Bankers Association. Mr.. E. G. Nc
Dougal, in their Journal, among other
things, said, "Should the government
continue to interfere in our banking
business, except for the enforcement
of law and protection of depositors, it
inevitably will make the same record
of inefticiency and failure as in de-
signing airplanes, in building and op-
Grating ships and in operating rail
roads. Hampered by red tape, banks
will not be able to give the public
good service. Credit, without which
this country never could have de-
veloped and outstrinped all others,
cannot thrive shackled by politics and
bureaucracy"
When men of Mr.. McDougal's posi-
ton and influence depict the govern
ment in tnhe above light the question
is, Mr.. Clearwater, how should we
vote for or against government? ?
Another question is why do so many
foreigners come to America from
southeastern Europe? The answer
is: European bankers are permitted
to buy large shares of stock in Amer
lean industries, they then send work.
men to America to work in these in
dustries who live in manner much
lower than the American standard,
spend little of their earnings with
our merchants but send their money
back home, which eventually goes
back to the foreign banks.
Tons Of paper and gallons of ink
NAV be consumed to explain why
America is being shunted from its
former ideals, but why not make it
short and in plain American style
and say that whatever is wrong with
the manner in which the nation func-
ton is due to the activities of the
educated, not the ignorant. Many OF
those who are at fault are educated
Americans who place money and So
cial position paramount to principles
and allow themselves to be made the
tools of foreign capitalists who dis
like the America idea of independ-
ance and equality.
What is. needed in the United
States is not the limiting of the right
to vote but the limiting of foreign
propaganda on the part of the edu-
Gated anti-Americans who are con-
taminating the minds of the people
with their lying tongues.
The glib tongued orators and writ
ers of today, who pone an American,
make frequent use of the words,
American Ideals" but seldom do
they explain what those words mean.
The United States has a Constitu-
ton, and the government should func-
ton according to the views which are
expressed therein, and all people,
American born or foreign, educated
or unlearned, who are not governed
thereby are guilty of conduct un-
becoming an American citizen and
are a menace to the republic.
The writer would call Mr.. Clear
waters attention to the fact that