People's Pilot, Volume 4, Number 20, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 November 1894 — The Scholar in Politics. [ARTICLE]

The Scholar in Politics.

If an educated man, or a highly respectable man without much education, ventures into politics he is unmercifully ridiculed by the parisan press and the foulmouthed politicians until he is driven out. It is a lamentable fact that our politics is largely in the hands of an ill-bred,ignor-ant. pot house class of men. We speak, of course, of politics in the cities and larger towns, but it is the city and town politicians who give cast to our political systems. The country politician, as a rule, is clean enough, but he permits himself to be led around by the pot house leaders of the cities. Congressman Everett, son of the late Edward Everett, of Massachusetts, has been unable to stomach the rottenness of American politics and declines a renomination. Mr. MacVeagh has had S. I. P. tacked onto him, meaning the scholar in pol itics, and is constantly held up o ridicule because of his education. A Populist candidate for congress in this city, who was once a preacher and an active Prohibitionist, seldom sees his name printed in the partisan press except as Preacher Taylor or Prohibitionist Taylor. But not a word of ridicule is uttered against the congressional candidates that have been dug out of some hole and have neither education or respectability and are not even overloaded with brains. The more respectable and competent the candidate the more wickedly he is abused, and that is largely the reason that men of standing in the cities and thousands of respectable farmers refrain from taking an active part in politics. If we had a lot of drunken, disreputable farmers whom we could nominate for office, we suppose they would prove satisfactory to the politicians. But farmers are usually respectable and if nominated for official position, are targets for the mud slinging pens of partisan editors. But there is a plain political duty for decent men to discharge, even if they are covered with mud.— Farmers Voice.