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About The commoner. (Lincoln, Neb.) 1901-1923 | View Entire Issue (Dec. 9, 1910)
mtiin ij i mi' mi'MiUltimim''') 6 - Commoner. 'l v " s '"VOLUME a 0, DUMBER 4 t r. I Sk it, ? contented conservatives who, hardoned,by .fat years insists that "all's for tho best in tho host of all possible worlds' " This man stands stubbornly in tho face of all progress. Ho consistently opposes every human aspiration for better things. For money, ho asks more and more; to men, ho concedes less and less. Ho demands higher rates for railroad service Ho resists all attempts at tho regulation of pub lic service corporations. Ho regards the Wisconsin proposal for govern ment railroads, docks and steamships in Alaska as unspeakable heresy. Ho insists on higher rates upon all necessities of life every time tho tariff is revised. With hundreds of thousands of children going to school every morning without their break fasts, ho declares that our trouble is not "high cost of living, but cost of high living." He is fighting now for a kind of "open shop" which would crush labor unions to tho dtret, leaving the workmen to deal in his naked in dividuality with organized dollars. He says men shall work when and where he pleases for"what he chooses to give them, or that they shall starve, with their women" and children. The standpatriot is tho greatest asset of so cialism. If he has his way, the earth will be owned by fewer and fewer, the "many will be more and more completely exploited and the revolution will come the surer and the sooner. Tho growing strength of socialism in every olection for tho past twenty-two yeard means just this: , We aro going forward. Most of us would prefer to progress by evolu tion, but if the standpatriot continues to stand pat long enough and hard enough he will prob ably -succeed in. giving us revolution instead.-r-Omaha Daily News. "THE REAL ENEMIES OF PERSONAL LIBERTY"- ' , During the campaign, the Milwaukee .Journal printed the" following significant editorial: V. FOLLY ON THE WING '. In tho face of the active efforts of the brew ers' political agents to center the support of atho opponents of sumptuary legislation upon reactionary republican candidates for office, tho denunciation of their methods by Adolph J. Schmitz, democratic candidate for governor, In his speech at Sheboygan Tuesday night, will meet with the approval of thousands of citizens, who, like him, are opposed to prohibition from principle rather than as an expedient for office getting or to serve the material Interests in volved In the liquor traffic. Mr. Schmitz declares that the political agents of the brewers are trying to raid the democratic party for votes for their candidate for governor In the republican primaries. Though the demo cratic party traditionally and by principle has stood against tho prohibition principle and in doing so has been a bulwark against the pro hibitory tendencies of the republican party, the brewers,-whose Interests have, been served by the democratic stand for principle, are now en gaged, through their lobbyists and political agents, In an effort to wipe the democratic party out of legal existence in Wisconsin. For, . un less it shall be able to cast twenty per cent of its vote at the primary, it can have no place vpon tho official ballot. It is just such methods as this that have en abled the anti-saloon league and its political allies to roll up the "dry waves" that have turned county after county and state after state away from rational regulation of the liquor traffic. Tho democratic party by tradition and princi ple is opposed to prohibitory legislation, but the .brewers should take heed of the fact that po litical tradition is sitting lightly on the people at this time. It is quite possible to turn sup porters from principle into opponents. For the law of self-preservation is the first of all laws. The bre'wers, if they permit their political agents to continue to play upon the anti-prohibition sentiment in Wisconsin to serve the ends of the reactionary republicans and their big business ramifications will run tho danger of sowing the whirlwind. It will be dangerous for them and their interests should they be made to bear tho responsibility if through manipulation and chicanery and fraud tho re actionary elements should obtain control of the legislature. For if there is one instance where the brewers political agents are supporting and bringing out progressive candidates it is not known, while it is notorious that they were very powerful in the "Taft republican" conven tion and have constituted one of the ruling forces behind the Connor committee. Tho real enemies of personal liberty in Wis consin at the present time are those short-sighted brewers who are lending themselves to the reactionary movement and seeking to slaughter the men and parties that have stood as a stone wall against sumptuary legislation as a matter of conviction and principle. TOLSTOY "A GREAT REBEL" Many newspaper writers are criticising Tol stoy; some refer to him as a degenerate, others call him an inferior man, while thero are those who say that ho was of no real service to tho world. One of the best protests against such estimates upon a great lover of mankind ap peared in a New York World editorial, as follows "Tolstoy was the twentieth century's great rebel a rebel in literature, a rebel in politics, a rebel in religion, a rebel in ethics, a rebel in economics, his hand raised against every human institution and every convention that outraged his reason or his conscience. He was the uni versal Luther, always ready to nail his thesis to the door and say, 'Here I stand; I cannot do otherwise; God help me , "To have written 'Anna Korenina' and 'War and Peace' is to be numbered among the Immor tals; but a still higher immortality than any thing literature has to bring belongs to the man who could defy the Russian autocracy, who could dofy tho holy synod, who could defy all the manners, customs and laws of his caste, and set his foot upon the neck of all govern mental and ecclesiastical authority the while he gave his message to the world. "To be sure, it was a weird and incoherent message. Most of the Tolstdy theories were fantastic and impossible. Never outside of a madhpuse was there such illogical logic. No government could exist under Tolstoy's notion of government. Religion would cease to be re ligion. No nation of Tolstoys could survive under the code of Tolstoy. Civilization would disappear into the eternal twilight. Human society itself, would crumble and vanish. "But great rebels are not to be taken liter ally or followed blindly. Their function is to shake mankind out of its lethargy and to lay impious hands upon all the idols that mankind has come to worship. They seldom find the truth themselves, but because of them other men find it and know it and prove it. John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in the grave, but his soul goes marching on; and because it goes marching on, the shackles are struck from mil lions of slaves. "There Is no writer who could not demolish Tolstoy's theories of literature. There is no doctor of divinity who could not crumple up his notions of religion and theology. There is no bureaucrat who could not demonstrate the futility of his notions of government. Thero is no economist who could not prove that Tol stoy was without a fundamental notion, of any system of economics. There is no sociologist who could not prove that the Tolstoy theories were the very negation of society. Yet for all that, Tolstoy stands as one of the commanding figures of modern times, and his generation must say of him as Napoleon said of Goethe 'There is a man. ii PRIMARY LAW IN NEBRASKA Two years ago the Nebraska legislature enact ed what is known as the open primary law. This provides for one general primary, for all parties and a blanket ballot containing side by side each party ticket. Anyone, regardless of their "pre vious affiliations may vote on any one of theso tickets although he may not, vote on more than one. As a result of this open primary the liquor interests of tho state led an army of "wet" republicans into the. democratic primary, defeated the present governor of Nebraska for a second term and nominated a man of their own choosing. This nominee repeatedly stated that one-half of the votes he received in tho primary were republican votes. Naturally there is considerable discussion on the primary law. Many insist upon the repeal of the open primary provision. Professor George Elliott Howard, of the Nebraska State University, has written to' the Lincoln (Neb.) Journal an interesting article in which he says: "I desire to say with emphasis that I believe that, wherever in the country It has been .fairly tried, the direct primary is proving to be a Social benefit. Like the referendum, it is seen to be an efficient means of putting government directly in the hands ,of the people. Decidedly the recent campaign in Nebraska demonstrates the value of our primary law, however shorUof the highest ideal that law may be, or howeyer unfortunate certain choices of candidates may have turned out. Our law strikes at the per nicious influence of the parasitical politician, without in the least thwarting the legitimate aims of political parties as the true organs of genuine public opinion. It is significant that it is the politician of the old order, the member of tho 'court house ring,' together with the selfish or anti-social interests which he serves with his eye steadily fixed on the 'plum tree' in the spoils garden who is the bitterest cn-x omy of the direct primary in any form. On the . ' other hand, conservative men who have honest ly doubted the wisdom of the direct primary are more and more coming to see that exper- ' ience is proving their doubts unfounded. "Coming now to the Nebraska primary lw, I feel that it ought to be improved at least in two ways. If public opinion is already sufficient- ly educated, I should be glad to have an amend- "" ment sanctioning the 'wide-open' ballot; ' a 'blanket' ballot which would permit tho voter to 'scratch' as he pleases just as he now does at regular elections thus ignoring party lines at any point. This is the highest ideal to which our states will come in time. If we are now ready for so broad a stride forward and quite likely we are not ready then let us adopt the Wisconsin plan as amended in 1907. 'At all primaries,' runs the statute, 'there shall be an Australian ballot made up of the several party tickets herein provided for, all of which shall be securely fastened together at the top and folded, provided that there shall be as many separate tickets as there are parties entitled to participate in said election. The names of tho candidates shall be arranged alphabetically i under the appropriate titles of the re'spec tiyo offices and under the . proper- party desig nation.' The elector votes one of these tickets,' 'scratching' and adding such names as he pleases from the other tickets. But party integrity is guarded by tho following provision: " 'If any elector writes upon his ticket the name of any person who is a candidate for the same office upon some other ticket than that upon which his name is so written, this ballqt shall be counted for such person only as a canr didate of the party upon whose ticket his name is written, and shall in no other case be counted s for such other ticket.' "Secondly, should we not amend our primary law by adopting some form of preferential vot ing? It is needful to eliminate minority nom inations, where the plurality falls below ? cer tain mark, say forty per cent. The state ,of Washington has a plan pf 'second choice' voting which appears to start off well; and Wisconsin , is almost sure to adopt a similar plan this winter. "Whatever we do, I feel sure that we shall not move backward. If we can supplant our present system of representative legislation by direct legislation, and at the same time improve our primary law N on the two lines indicated, we shall advance true democracy and do much, to tatfe the virus out of party politics. It will tend to call parties back to their rightful place . in the social service. Then it may be easier for', the politician to be a statesman. "The referendum and the direct primary will . , neither destroy nor degrade parties, but purge " " ' and ennoble them." y.' INFORMATION WANTED James Ballenger and wife, Elk City, Okla. Will anyone of the readers of this paper kindly inform me if they know the whereabbuts 'of Laura' B. Ballenger, or Laura B. Hensel? The last time we heard from her she was in Port-T ' land, Oregon. Her mother's maiden name was Maggie McNab, and her mother's people lived at Omrfha, Neb. Laura. B. Ballenger is the child of William T. Ballenger, our son, who has been dead for several years. Any information lead , ing to the whereabouts of Laura B. Ballenger wil be appreciated as we have property to give her. We are her grandparents and are very old. Mrs-, Eva Handley, Dalton, Neb.: A boy 14 years old, Blender built, blue eyes, riding a roan , -pony, loft home October 3,7. Any one knowing - ' his whereabouts would do mo a errant fn-. u-o -. having him write me at Dalton. Tell him I am staying at the Grand hotel. Tell him 'I am watching the mails and praying for a1 letter from V him. All papers please copy. The American Homestead, a monthly farm Journal of national scope, will bo sent to all Commoner subscribers, without additional cost, who ronow their subscriptions during the montiS of December when this notice is mentioned. iffa t'- U' 'I '.