Jasper County Democrat, Volume 15, Number 47, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 September 1912 — WILSON HAS RIGHT IDEA [ARTICLE]

WILSON HAS RIGHT IDEA

Democratic Candidate Makes Appeal to Reason in His Acceptance Speech. The hostile critics have found it very hard to get much comfort for themselves out of the speech of Governor Wilson. We are told that the Progressives are disappointed. Yet if the governor had “run wild" we should have been told that he was not “safe.” It seems to us that Governor Marshall put the case very well when he said, “It is most pleasing that the ills of the country are to be treated by a physician and not bya surgeon." As no surgery is needed, at least none of the extreme form, the country may well be pleased that none 13 proposed. It is well, in this period of calm, after the storm, that the people should consider public questions from the point of view of principle. No progress of a real and lasting sort can be made on any other basis. We ought to be sure that we know what we wish, and then we should be sure that we go about getting it in the right way. And that is the Wilson idea. We have had scores of nostrums proposed, and many wild suggestions made that can never be carried into effect. And there is a marked disposition on the part of some public men to promise anything If by so doing they think they can win the favor of the people. The time has come for the use of more reason and less rhetoric in connection with our political and social problems. And the appeal of Governor Wilson is to reason. We doubt whether the people of this country will refuse to heed such an appeal coming from Wilson or any one elee. During this campaign we should take counsel together, which is precisely what the Democratic candidate asks us to do. It is strange, indeed, that there should be any people in this country who should pretend to see in this attitude proof of a non-progressive mind. Yet there has been so much shouting and screaming, so much wild denunciation, so much aspersion of motive, that perhaps we ought not to be surprised that some people look on all this as an essential element in progressiveness. Governor Wilson at least knows what this government is and what it can and cannot do. And that Is more than can be said for some of our leaders. Also he has by deed rather than by words proved himself to be an efficient and earnest reformer. If this campaign is to be one of education it must be one of reason.