Jasper County Democrat, Volume 23, Number 75, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 December 1920 — A TEXAS POST-MORTEM [ARTICLE]

A TEXAS POST-MORTEM

Election post-mortems are always profitless and as regards the sweeping overturn of last nlonth, particularly so. Accounting .for it is easy, however. Behind it was all the backwash of the great war, to which, it is more evident now than ever, the great majority of American people were opposed. Greed, grouch and treason played a conspicuous part. Big business was angered because it was not allowed to take quite all during the period of the war and the price inflations that followed, and saw a psychological opportunity in popular dissatisfaction to regain control of the government and cinch its grip on the economic system of the country through the federal reserve act Allied with .it were all the foreign V

racial groups which we thought had been thoroughly achotched during the war, but which came back strong in response to Senator Harding's tacit appeal to discontent —the Germans in revenge for the war itself and the victory won by an American army, the Italians because of the Flume incident and President Wilson's stand against Italian Imperialistic ambitions, the Irish because of his refusal to demand Irish freedom, and" the negro in his stubborn and dumb allegiance to the name “Republican'' — the eternal dupe, doomed to the end and the ration s single hopeless group. The preponderant majority of the white Americans of the native stock undoubtedly voted for Cox, but they were vastly outnumbered by the jarring and discordant groups enfranchised under false notions of Democratic ideals and who are now political masters of the nation which the old Anglo-Celflc stock erected in blood and travail. The woman’s vote, as the intelligent man foresaw, only double the partisan equation. Its only perceptible effect was to delay the count, the women being not one whit more susceptible to idealistic appeal than the men. Then there was every form of domestic discontent. The war had to be paid for, but all of us wanted our old friend George to foot the bill.

The tax scheme, framed In haste, was necessarily imperfect, was poorly, sometimes despotically, administered —purposely so —by Republican civil service employes at Washington and it resulted in a formidable body of resentment. Everybody but the salaried man got a plenty out of the war—but all, farmer, laborer, merchant, manufacturer, butcher, baker and candlestick-maker, wanted more. The man who had to pay excess profit taxes was mad and the man who had to pay income taxes was mad. The league of nations was the very smallest »factor involved. Avarice, hatred and grouch won and lost the fight. The solemn reference was a mockery, because of human limitations. It is a sad commentary, but it is true. —Paris (Texas) Mercury.