THE RELIGION OF POLITICS

...You cannot pursue happiness without you love your fellowman...

...That is the cry...

...Yet we are apt to look at it lightly, because in many sections of our country political bosses and political machines, held together by corruption and by money, have dominated and controlled, through the selfishness of humanity, those who ought to stand guard for the happiness and the welfare of millions of their fel-lowmen...

...I am a Democrat...

...It brought about the formation and the foundation of a government that has been the model of every government that has ever been established from that day to this...

...I REMEMBER quite a number of years ago, when I was a candidate for the United States Senate, an incident that helps to bring out my point...

...We would guard it as sacredly as we guard any right or any privilege that to us is the most dear...

...we will give to our flag a meaning that it hasn't had before, the right to float over a country that is really true, that has the courage to correct the evils and that has the courage to do right even when it may be temporarily popular to do wrong...

...Our forefathers, when they issued that Immortal Declaration of Independence, said that life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness were the inalienable rights of man...

...Little by tittle, through all the years And the een-turles that have passed, the power of the king has been taken away and given to the people...

...The pursuit of happiness is the object of government, Government has no other excuse for its existence, If you love your fellow man, you are pursuing happiness...

...THE PARTY is an instrument of government...

...the people were slaves, He had the right to take the life of any of his subjects without being held accountable to anyone...

...But the man who violates a trust, a trust of his country, his city, his state, his nation, where the happiness of everybody is involved, is sometimes passed with the remark, "Oh, it is politics," and no further consideration is given to it...

...He would rebel against such conduct in his lodge room, or in his club...

...Political parties may be necessary under present civilization, and I think they are necessary for the better carrying out of the objects of government, and for the better idea of giving to the people of a government additional happiness...

...His action as trustee for those whom he representa has to do with the happiness of the babe in the cradie, with gray-haired old age standing upon the vorge of Eternity, of millions of men and women sometimes helpless and unable to defend themselves, a trust that is the most saered that can be given by one man to another...

...If they become corrupt and get control of the government, the government becomes corrupt, because no stream ever rose higher than its source...

...The man who digs a trench uses, his shovel, and when it becomes dull or dent or crooked, or is injured, he fixes it, remedies the difficulty, and if the shovel is beyond recovery he casts it aside without any hesitation and gets a new one...

...Is it not something sacred...

...How often I have heard men say, 'I never scratched my ticket in my life...

...Norris, I hope you will be elect-ed to the United States Senate...

...I had been serving in the House of Representatives for some time, and in this campaign for the Senate I spoke in one of the beautiful cities of my State on a particular Saturday evening...

...He said, "Mr...

...It has cost the life blood of many of our forefathers who dared to step out in advance and blaze the trees through the wilderness of superstition and doubt...

...I must drive twelve miles and preach a sermon...

...WHAT is a political party...

...We are violating the trust given to us by our forefathers...

...Parties are formed with the idea of bringing about in a more reasonable and logical way the blessings that come from government, and they have no other excuse for their existence...

...If we could take away by military force the right of the people to vote, we would cease to be a republic that instant...

...he wouldn't stand for such a principle in his own home...

...HUMAN affection is the basis of all happiness...

...the ballot, without which there can be no such government as ours...

...Based upon quite an active experience of quite a good many years, I would say that the greatest one evil in our politics, in the city, in the country, in the state and in the nation, is partisanship...

...And the cry they make to pull their chestnuts out of the fire is always the same, "Never any variations...

...It is the corner-stone of our liberty...

...That Declaration has stood the test of more than a century...

...There is no possible way of escape, because it means the perversion of the ballot...

...Even our Constitution nowhere recognises such a thing as a political party...

...We are using an instrumentality for the injury of our fellowman, rather than for the happiness of humanity...

...It has never been disputed...

...There isn't any other way, and when you do that a few times any machine that in one way or another has gained possession or control will be driven from the stronghold and defeated...

...The man who lives unto himself alone has not yet learned the Divine lesson that it is better to give than it is to receive, And it is because Ben Adhem announced the doctrine that he was one who loved his fellow-man that God Himself proclaimed him as a true lover of Divinity...

...It has not been a straight line...

...The next morning, a beautiful day, I went out on the streets and I was hailed by a man who introduced himself to me, and who told me he was a preacher...

...said Ben Adhem...

...That is a sign of intelligence and wisdom, and if the people themselves make mistakes, as they have done and will do in the future, they will rectify them when they are convinced of them and have an opportunity...

...I am very much interested in your campaign...

...Then," said Ben Adhem, "I pray you, write my name as one who loves his fellow man...

...The angel vanished, but the next night the same angel returned and he bore in his hand a scroll, written in letters of burning fire, containing a list of those who loved the Lord, and Abou Ben Adhem's name led all the rest...

...ACITIZEN'S duty, therefore, is always to have a watchful eye of our country and of our parties...

...THE MAN who robs a store, or steals a horse, is "sent to prison—probably so...

...There are other evils, it is true, but that is the greatest of all, where your rights and my rights are trampled under foot by the decrees of bosses and machine politicians who have succeeded in getting the control of one party or the other, or of perhaps three parties at the same time, and are thus perverting the very objects of government, leading it away from human happiness to human greed and human selfishness...

...It is to me a source of great satisfaction that the younger generation is not blindly following, as some of us older fellows do...

...It was the statement almost of a self-evident truth, and yet it had never been stated before...

...ORIGINALLY the king was supposed to be related to Divinity, and to gain his power from God Himself...

...The easiest way to kill a machine in politics is to defeat the men that the machine nominates...

...After all, is it not simply an instrumentality of government...

...Yet in Ibusiness that man wouldn't think of doing such a thing...

...It is the one thing more than any other for which humanity has fought from the Dark Ages of barbarism to the present time...

...The most corrupt machine anywhere in the United States would be put out of business in twenty-four hours if the leaders of the machine, those who control it, did not think they could fool enough people, one way or the other, to put their men in control of the country...

...And finally, as a result of these contests, we have been given the ballot, the emblem of freedom...

...To sin by silence when we should protest makes cowards out of men...

...There are millions of people like that preach-er all over our fair land, who have forgotten, because perhaps they have lived in a rut for many years, that their own conscience that controls them in everything else has nothing to do with their actions in politics...

...We arc losing sight of the fact that Ben Adhem proclaimed that we should love our followmen...

...These politicians will control things anyway...

...I have followed you, and I wanted to hear you talk and to meet you, and I came down to your meeting last night...

...The story of civilization from the days of barbarism has been one continual onward and upward march...

...If that party becomes corrupt, we ought to correct it...

...And did it ever occur to you, my friends, that those machines are always in a minority—always...

...vote 'er straight...

...When the eternal change that waits on Growth and action shall proceed with Ever increasing concord, hand in hand...

...If we put the party above the government, we have violated one of the fundamental principles of the Declaration of Independence...

...AND THEN we say that politics is corrupt...

...we have gone down temporarily, perhaps, but we have always profited by the mistakes that we have made...

...Norris, I never could do that...

...And there is only one way on earth in which you can do it, and that is to defeat the nominees who in your judgment have been corruptly nominated, or are incompetent to fulfill the duties of the office for which they are candidates...

...That is his instrument with which he is working, and when we represent the Government, especially where we have one so vast and so varied as ours, we reach it through the instrumentality of a party...

...The few who dare must speak, and speak again to right the wrongs of many...

...He would demand honesty, and yet the public official in one way or another holds in his hand the happiness of everybody...

...Declaration of Independence is Cornerstone of Liberty in United States By GEORGE W. NORRIS (United States Senator from Nebraska) OLD ABOU BEN ADHEM, it is said, was awakened one night by an angel writing in a book, and when Adhem inquired of the angel what he was doing, the angel said, "I j am writing the names of those i who love the Lord...

...No," said the angel in reply...

...The world has climbed on protest...

...I am a firm believer in human progress...

...Oh," said he, "Mr...

...There isn't a State in this Union but what has more honest men and women in it than corrupt men and women...

...if no voice had been raised against ignorance and lust, superstition still would rule the world and guillotines decide our least disputes...

...we are perverting the ballot, the sacred emblem of human liberty, and using it to destroy, rather than to build up...

...never be measured...

...And when the ballot was finally given, the government was turned over to the people from the rulers...

...as the people improved in civilization and increased their knowledge and education, they continually demanded that the ruler should surrender some of his power into the hands of the people...

...Yet they are not sacred...

...And I believe there will come a time of which the poet spoke: "When no grief shall gnaw the heart...

...And if the machine were not able, by means of the party spirit, to get the vote of honest, patriotic men to help them out of the ditch, they never could elect a single man or a single individual to office—not one...

...We would again become slaves, unless we took steps to recover it...

...There wouldn't be any machine if they didn't succeed at elections...

...He was supreme over his people...

...If the ballot has cost these sacrifices, if the ballot after all is the difference between a free people and an absolute monarchy, then how should a people regard the ballot...

...And I said, "Well, my good friend, if that is the way you feel, why don't you vote for me...

...An intelligent people will not always submit to the control of party machines when they are corrupt...

...we would begin to appreciate what it means to have it...

...Why, I get so enthusiastic about your candidacy that I almost feel as though I ought to vote for you myself...

...Sometimes voters get discouraged and say, "What is the use...

...The strongest party man on earth ought to rejoice when he gets an opportunity to make his party better, and to purify it, put it on a higher plane so that even from a party standpoint alone the duty of a patriot is to censure his party, criticize it when it is wrong, standing by it when it is right, rectify its errors and its crimes, if crimes have been committed...

...If we are silent when our country calls, if we are silent when our party calls, we are not performing our full duties as citizens...

...It doesn't make any difference whether the ballot is taken away from the people by force or by deception, the result is just the same...

...we would again be in a condition that our forefathers in the days of barbarism were in when they had nothing to say about their government...

...We will drive the machine from power everywhere in our great land...

...I can only talk a few minutes, because I must hurry back...

...is my name written there...

...it means that the vice of an intelligent, patriotic people can never be heard and can...

...Life and liberty are included in the pursuit of happiness...

...The citizen has not done his duty, or does not do his duty, as I look at it, if, when such a Shing occurs., he will say, "Although this man (or this official) has not done his duty, has been false to his trust, yet he is the nominee of my party, and I must heed the cry of the politicians, 'Vote for the ticket straight, yellow dog and all...

...And when the same pollticians by corrupt, by illegal means obtain a nomination in their party they vote for them and look with disdain upon those who refuse to take the medicine that way...

...and that to establish and maintain these rights governments were established among men...

...It is an emblem of freedom, and we cannot have freedom without it...

...He preach, ed in a little town twelve miles away, and he said, "I have heard about you for some time...

...And yet that kind of a doctrine will ultimately, if carried to its logical conclusion, mean the end of our Republic...

...I stand for everybody on my ticket, no matter what may be his ability or his morality or his honesty...

...I always vote the straight ticket...

...Do you know that every night on bended knees I ask God to guard and protect you, and see that you are elected to the Senate, in order that your activities may have a wider scope...

...It is a source of gratification to me to know that the independent spirits are coming out of our colleges and our schools, and this all means that in time we will correct this evil as our forefathers corrected other evils that have gone before, and that in time we will reach a goal that we ought perhaps to have reached before this, that we will take the necessary steps so that our children can take the light of wisdom and carry it farther up the mountain side than we have been able to take it, and to increase the common happiness of man much beyond where we have been able to place it...

...If we could realize how sacred it is, if we could realize that it was to give us the ballot that our forefathers fought in Revolutionary days...

...Is there anything" sacred about it ? Is there anything about it that should cause us to hold it in reference and to put it upon a pedestal above our country...

...we say this machine or that machine is in control, and it doesn't make any difference, they will have their way about it...

...it has taken its place among the great and immemorial statements of civilization...

...They are only a means to bring about an end, and if we go so far as to permit any misunderstood loyalty to a party as to place our party above the best interests of our country, we are using the instrument which could do good to bring about evil...