People's Pilot, Volume 6, Number 23, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 November 1896 — THE LOAVES AND FISH [ARTICLE]

THE LOAVES AND FISH

TROUBLE IN STORE FOR M’KINLEY IN GIVING THEM OUT. The Quadrennial Agony Which Every President Hut Go Through—Army of Plaoe Hunter* That Besiege Him—He Will Not Know Best For Months. Mr. MoKinley will not really realise that he is president until the rush for offloe begins, and then he will know beyond a doubt that he is not only in the highest office within the gift of the American people, but that one of the most important duties of that office is the appointment of several thousand other fellows to office. Neither in the civilised nor in the uncivilised world can the soenea attending the first days in offloe of a president of toe United States be duplicated. They are unique. Dear to tire heart of every American who wants to undertake the great trust of holding • public offloe, they are to some extent food for amusement and satire to toe remainder of Christendom. We do things on a gigantio soale. We have the biggest trees, the biggest waterfall, toe biggest public buildings, the biggest (and possibly the ugliest) monument, the biggest political campaigns and the biggest inaugural pageant No other country can hold a oandle to us. We take the patisserie, as toe French would say. The feelings at a candidate for the presidency mast be strange in the extreme, but almost any one of ns would like to feel them. But if the mere fact of the oandidaoy must make toe oandidate feel queer, whpt must it be for him when he rides np “the avenue” in the presence of 1,000,000 peoplfe, flags flying, drums beating, bayonets glistening, soldiers and oitisens marching, the crowd roaring, the whole world talking of but the one supreme thing, the melanoholy fellow who is going out sitting beside the triumphant fellow who is going in and trying to look as if he enjoyed it—all frantio, all lnnatip, all bellowing and soreaming. “The king is dead! Long live the king!” That is the way the government administration of the highest civilization the world has ever known is hustled into office. Then ooines the ball of the inauguration, when all who oan pay the fee jam and orowd and crush and scream and swear in unison for four or five hours, the president and his family in tho midst of them, the danoers fighting for space to trip, perspiring, catohing cold, inviting and often getting pneumonia or grip or a fever. That is the grand and solemn finale of tho business of putting a president in office, and it must almost seem possible that it is enough to make the president wish that we had the simpler and more impressive forms In vogue at tho induction of an Indian or Ashanti chieftain.' All this red fire moil at an end, the new president finds himself at peaoe, as he fondly hopes, transferred at last from his humble home to the historic mansion where so many of his predecessors , have dwelt for a time. Now he is mas- j ter of the situation. Hois behind strong doors, looked, gaarded on the outside j by faithful human mastiffs, who are yet further re-enforced by a cordon of polioe. It is impossible he should be disturbed except by friends whom be invites and wishes to see.

His cabinet is selected, not without some friction, on account of the persistence of the arguments of boss politicians whose-business it is to have friends at court. He has had to abandon many of his own views in regard to the construction of the little machine of personal advisers and beads of departments in response to the demands of the greater maohine which dominates the party which made him president. The senate is in extraordinary session for the purpose of confirming members of the cabinet and their immediate assistants. There is no friction here. The sonate kindly permits, except on rare occasions, the president and the managers to control the personality of the president’s political family. The first day or two of the stay of 'the executive in the White House is passed in comparative qaiet and ThenPresto! Change! Bang, bang! goes the doorbell before the guards are well awake of a morning. Senators, representatives, bosses, state and local; big and little politioians—the littler they are the bigger their assumption of importancestream up the pavements. Carriages whirl through the great iron gates and up the drives. Anterooms are crowded with a pushing and insistent crowd. They struggle for precedence to gain a hearing. They resort to all sorts of trioks and devioes to induce the guards to give them the advantage of a minute, an hour, a day, for there are so many of them that some are focoed to go day after day before they can get a hearing, no matter bow rapidly the poor, harassed, beleaguered man in the inner room strives to satisfy them. Assistant secretaries, comptrollers, auditors, commissioners, deputies and so on must be appointed for the departments. Eaoh congressman has a favorite, who has assisted him inhiß political and factional wars,for each of the places. Within a few days the straggle, the fleroe contention for place and pay, reaches its height A few appointments are made. Every appointment disappoints. One succeeds, and a dozen are "turned down,” and a dozen hearts burn with wrath against the president who is the author of their humiliation and ruin. The defeated aspirant blames his congressman, and the congressman, himself hounded to death, blandly as he may explains bow It was all the fault of the president. To make the descent into Avemus easier, the congress-

man says there is a hope that some other place can be found for the hungry office seeker, and than the tragedy is played over again, the aspirant growing poorer and more desperate day after day, the congressman more hardened, the president more harassed, the target for on ever increasing volume of curses. The new president had never dreamed that there'were snch incomputable numbers of postoffleea, ous tom houses, internal revenue offices, pension agenoies, consulates and foreign legations. To his maddened brain there are millions of them, and a thousand aspirants for each one. From early morning, not only till dewy eve, but far into the night, he hears the tramp, tramp, tramp of the office hunters and their congressional sponsors. Tramp, tramp, tramp, they file past him in never ending procession while he sleeps. ~ Sleeps? The offloe hunting Macbeth has murdered sleep. The attempt to sleep is but one long and terrible nightmare. The closed eyes oannot shat oat the interminable line of plaoe seekers, fierce, hungry eyed, ready to bless or curse as the pendulum of appointment swings. Pleading, entreating,urging, demanding, polite, obsequious, impudent, insulting, they oome on and on, in herds and droves, asserting eaoh his prerogative to get and hold offloe as the price of bis fealty in the future and the reward of his services in the past. This is toe feast of human skulls to which the American people have invited Mr. MoKinley.—Washington Cor. Pittsburg Dispatch.