THE FERMENT IN THE WEST
The Ferment in the West Viewed by a Conservative, Litarary Magazine THE political tspirit recently shown, in many Western States, in both of the great parties, has sorely perplexed politicians in...
...They want the quickening impulse to come from themselves rather than have it thrust upon them from the outside, even by men who may be as wise as they are powerful...
...The West does not want any man or any industry to be free to write into the laws raising the public revenue sections designed mainly to meet private ends...
...Holmes' pointer dog gazing at the turtle...
...It is a revolt against privilege in legislation, whether national or local, and a determination to make an end of it...
...They could see that this political manifestation went deep and wide, that there was something in it like a revolutionary stir, that men's minds were bubbling with new thoughts and emotions...
...but the cause and the aim of it all they have not been able to discern...
...If one were to seek to put the movement in a single phrase, it would be, growing hatred of privilege...
...The ferment and protest and mounting discontent in State after State west of the AHeghanies cannot be explained by superficial or temporary causes...
...it is clear to those who have the patience to search out the truth of this extraordinary political phenomenon, that the mighty stirring of Western sentiment has to do with principles that lie near the heart of American democracy, and that deep answers to deep in the West because men on all sides there are coming to feel the sway of powerful motives and are determined to assert them in our public life and make them prevail...
...The theory of some in the East that legislation should be to molded and government so conducted as to give the highest possible activity to big corporations, is treated only with scorn in the West...
...It is not that the West can point to marked discrimination against her interests, nor that she is unduly taxed...
...The same law, framed differently and more representatively, would have failed to afford occasion for the present revolt...
...ambitious men were scheming to bring about new political alignments to their own profit, and so on...
...There they say that they would prefer less prosperity with more manliness and a truer equality before the law...
...They could sec no principle in it, and so they read into it personalities...
...Public men should open their minds to perceive the meaning of this new attitude of the West, which is big ivith political change...
...It is so because it is in a true sense a return to the aspirations and the moving ideals of democracy...
...they said it was a movement for or against one or another political personage, or what not...
...On one hand, the West *s> inclined to exaggerate grossly any superficial indifference or lack of sympathy of the East...
...When we really come to undt understand what is now astir in the West, we shall see it to be, with whatever mistakes of detail, a spirit of equality and of justice.—THE CENTURY MAGAZINE...
...They have stood before it as much puzzled as Dr...
...In their opinion, that does rot meet their charge that the tariff embodied too many of the arrogant demands of privdege...
...There can be, for example, no doubt that the West is greatly dissatisfied with the new tariff law...
...Whatever may be the differences of opinion between the different parts of the country, it is important that one part should at least know the tendencies of another...
...The Ferment in the West Viewed by a Conservative, Litarary Magazine THE political tspirit recently shown, in many Western States, in both of the great parties, has sorely perplexed politicians in the East...
...Again, the West does not like to be patronized...
...All this is so gross a misunderstanding of what has been and is actually going on in the West that it is highly desirable to try to ascertain the truth...
...They wish no interference of Eastern corporations in Western State or municipal politics...
...Great masses of intelligent people do not break old party ties for nothing, nor do members of Congress go on taking their political lives in their hands unless they have deep and compelling reasons...
...Her grievance lies, rather, in the conviction that t-lie tariff law was framed too largely by men who were the spokesmen of privilege...
...Nor is it aimed at persons, if by that is meant that it is bent on advancing or retarding the political fortunes of any man whatever...
...This new Western spirit is, indeed, non-partisan in the sense that men of all parties display it, and that they declare that they will permit no party to stand in the way of what they wish-to accomplish...
...But note the reasons for this...
...It is in vain that Western people are told that the new law is a good revenue-producer, or that their own part of the country is prospering under it...
...On the other hand, the East must not regard this Western discontent as if it were freakish or malicious...
...It is important that there should be no line of cleavage between East and West...
...Nor, primarily, is it a question of high or low tariff, as a theory...
...It resents that kind of well-being which is benevolently allowed it as an overflow of the profits of great capital...
...They could not be blind to the facts, but they have not known how to interpret them...
...If all this is so, it is high time that it were better understood...
...It is, in a word, the defiant and swelling assertion of the right of the governed to have full voice in their government that is the dominant note in all this Western outcry...
...And it needs only the slightest contact with Western men, and with the press and the elected officials that speak for them, to see what a mistake many in the East are making in their reading of the signs of the times in the Western political sky...
...Partisan motives were alleged...
...In one guise or another, this is the feeling which is driving the people of the Western States into such remarkable forms o) political striving and revolt...
Vol. 2 • October 1910 • No. 39
