EDITORIALS

Republicans Repudiate Cannon "The people under the leadership of Senator Cummins and Senator La Follette call themselves Republicans, but if they are then I am something else."—Speaker...

...The experiment is a most interesting one, and every friend of good government will wish Eau Claire good luck, and prosperity...
...The Speaker was on the defensive...
...But Eau Claire's government will have more chances of going wrong than that of Sioux City, Iowa, which adopted the "Des Moines Plan" the same day Eau Claire voted for the imperfect Wisconsin plan...
...Speaker Cannon...
...In England that would mean the prompt resignation of the leaders and the selection of others more in sympathy with the will of the people...
...He was alarmed at the wave of insurgency sweeping over the country...
...The people of Sioux City will not only be able to clean house completely every two years, but they will be able to discharge their unfaithful hired men at any time by the recall...
...The Cannon-Aldrich machine is still on the defensive...
...But there is nothing to indicate that Cannon and Aldrich, and their followers, have undergone a change of heart...
...She will not have the initiative...
...Sioux City will have both these...
...This repudiation of Cannon by an overwhelming majority of Republican editors in the twenty-six states covered by the Tribune's poll, forces us to the conclusion that Cannon is indeed "something else...
...The Cannon-Aldrich machine was threatened by it The leaders in control found it necessary to go before the rank and file of the party in an attempt to justify their course...
...Eau Claire's Experiment THE FIRST city of Wisconsin to adopt the so-called "Commission plan" of government is Eau Claire...
...That fact was established beyond all controversy by the poll of Republican editors taken by the Chicago Tribune...
...She will not have the real thing in the commission form of government, but no doubt the next legislature will supply the lack in the law, and make it really democratic...
...There is only this difference: now it is no longer a debatable question that Cannon and Aldrich do not represent the standards and the sentiment of the party...
...Eau Claire will not have the recall...
...Four months have passed since then...
...And still more important than this defect as a source of danger is the fact that Eau Claire's commissioners will go out of office only one at a time at two-year periods, so that even at elections, the people can never make a clean, sweep of things...
...Without it, the power of corruption to perpetuate itself in the long term of office and slow-changing governing body is a real and practical danger...
...Seldom, if ever, has such a condition of affairs in a system of party government been revealed as that shown by this vote...
...Party leaders discredited by the party itself more than five to one...
...The party of Cannon has nothing in common with the party of Lincoln...
...The city's affairs are turned over to a board of three who will have full control There will be none of the unwise, old-fashioned, complex election of city clerks, city engineers, city assessors, city attorneys and the like tnat make the old charters so destructive of government by public opinion...
...SUCH WAS the declaration of Cannon to the people of the Middle West last October...
...It is battling still more desperately to stem the rising tide of popular revolt against its domination in national affairs...
...The merits of the Wisconsin law are great...
...Eau Claire should select the best men possible for her first Commission, and then the cities of Wisconsin should all ask for the complete Commission plan like that of Des Moines, or the still better one, perhaps, of Grand Junction, Colorado...
...With the recall, and the initiative, Wisconsin's system would be a good one, perhaps...
...In spite of the bluster-ings of Cannon, in spite of the quiet, sure control of Aldrich and his indifference to the popular will, the fact remains—and it is the one big fact of to-day—that they and the interests they represent and serve hold a different political faith than the masses of people who compose the Republican party...
...There is still less to indicate that the sentiment of the people who compose the Republican party is different in character now from what it was four months ago...
...The party is abolished in city government...

Vol. 2 • February 1910 • No. 8


 
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