The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 26, July 1922 - April, 1923 Page: 290
324 p. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Southwestern Ilistorical Quarterly
that, in any event, the country will be spared the continuance of
a rule which, under the name of Grantism, has become synony-
mous with almost every public mischief, corruption and infamy.
Gov. Hayes will be a hard man to beat. We could not assert the
contrary without evincing gross obtuseness or a shameful lack of
candor. The Democratic leaders cannot too soon recognize and
ponder the fact that their adversaries have nominated for Presi-
dent a man whose character and record, while free from personal
reproach, is eminently calculated to call forth the full strength of
the Republican party, including the reform element represented
in the late New York conference. With the failure to nominate
Blaine, Conkling, Morton, or some such man, it becomes more than
ever necessary for the Democrats to project their campaign on the
very highest level of national patriotism and statesmanship, and
to meet the wants of the whole country with regard to civil service
reform and other urgent questions of public policy. Not many
months ago, it should be remembered, disgust with Republican
rule was well-nigh universal, owing to its neglect to redeem its
pledges respecting civil service reform, its systematic advancement
of incompetent and knavish men, its fostering, as attested by a
frightful series of disclosures, of official brokerage, venality and
larceny in every department of the government. The party seemed
to be reeling to ruin, a hopeless prey to its bad elements. At the
same time the country was obviously drifting toward the Democ-
racy. But suddenly this movement gave signs of pause, and the
old vitality of the Republican party began to reassert itself. How
shall we account for this new phase of the situation? Beyond
question, one of the chief causes of it has been the disappointing
course of affairs in the Democratic House of Representatives. The
majority in that body have failed to master and solve any great
problem of legislation, after failing at the outset to take a prac-
tical step towards a sound civil service by resisting the impor-
tunities of office seekers such as Doorkeeper Fitzhugh and such as
those who paid court to that whole-souled specimen of an official
Sancho Panza. But if the Democratic party has been on trial,
so to, speak, in the Democratic House of Representatives, it is not
too late for that body to command the favorable judgment of the
country by proposing specific and salutary measures of civil service
reform, and specific and salutary measures of financial policy de-
signed to remove the painful depression of business, enterprise and
industry which the financial policy of the dominant party has
inflicted. The St. Louis convention must do the rest, and that
body will commit a fatal blunder if it fails to adjust its action
to the fact that the nomination of Governor Hayes places the prin-
cipal battlefields of the presidential contest in the West and in
the Middle States, and more especially in Ohio and Pennsylvania.290
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 26, July 1922 - April, 1923, periodical, 1923; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101084/m1/296/: accessed April 19, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.