People's Pilot, Volume 4, Number 29, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 January 1895 — What Use is the Ballot to the Average Man. [ARTICLE]

What Use is the Ballot to the Average Man.

The average voter is like a chiid with a pair of scales who, not knowing their use, first lifts the weight out of one scale and puts it into the other; it succeeds in amusing itself in its own fashion but has not the remotest idea of the purpose the scales were intended for. The voter follows the same tactics. He has not the brains to realize it is principle, not party or men, he votes for. The consequence is wo see the democratic scale go down and the republican scale go up and vice versa. To-day ho is angry with the democrat, to-morrow with the Republican. It is ever the case of heads I win tails you lose. No amount of persuasion is of any avail that he should look at the issue. Present any far-reaching reform to him and explain it, he will say yes, but it has never been tried, it seems yery good though. He will go on voting the old party ticket with his string of reasons. One real reason is he likes to bo on the winning side. Another, he don't like to go back on the old party. Another, The candidate is a No. 1 man. Another, if he changes, he thinks the ins will not do as well as the outs. Another, he don’t think it any good to throw his vote away on the new party; he

is anxious to feel he was instrumental in electing one or the other of the rotten old parties. That to vote for and sustain a [principle, to lxim is quite foreign t > his object in voting. Somebody has said that men are but children of a larger growth. I think we can omit the growth

when it comes to voting and say that the average man entrusted with a vote is a veritable child. The misfortune is, if there is any growth in him, upon the subject of political economy, it is too slow to be perceived, hence we see the saddening spectacle of a perfect harvest of good things presented, from which the average voter turns childishly away and continues the game of the scales. Sad, isn’t it?—William Saul in Coming Nation.