Yet W. R. Hearst, with all his shyness and silence, has a way of hitting out quick, hard and sure that does more good for the people than all the “orators” have done in the last decade. If there is anything on this blessed earth that we have got enough of at this time, it is talk, talk, talk! From Presidents in fact and Presidents in prospectus, from Senators of all shades and Congressmen of every variety down to oratorical Federal Judges, College Doctors and legislative lights we have floods of talk, talk, talk! The misery of it all is that this oratory doesn’t mean anything. It strikes a bee-line for the waste basket.
It lives today, echoes tomorrow, and is forgotten the day after. The orator himself thinks only of the success of the speech. He drinks in the immediate applause, he gloats over the newspaper puffs, he puts out his chest, he is happy: and that is all. The speech accomplishes nothing; was not meant to accomplish anything. Perhaps the orator himself voted for the thing which he denounced, as happened with the Panama business when Democratic “orators” spoke on one side and voted on the other. Now if there is anything which the American people are sick unto death of, it is this kind of patent-medicine oratory. What we all want just now is that men shall become workers instead of automatic spellbinders. We want men who actually do something—men who have ideas, plans, practical resources; men who will literally take up their clubs and hammer away at monstrous abuses wherever they show their heads.
Such a man is W. R. Hearst. By his assault upon the Coal Trust he has exposed the heartless methods of capitalism and laid the foundations for much good work in the future. By his swift, successful attack upon the Gas Trust, which, by the collusion of city officials, was about to steal seven million dollars from the taxpayers of New York, he has set an example which should inspire every reformer in the Union.
May his courage become contagious! May his example breed imitations! May his firmness in standing for the rights of the people raise up enemies to the Trusts throughout the land!
Mr. Hearst is a Democrat; the corrupt officials who were about to surrender the treasury of New York to the Gas Trust were Democrats; that fact did not bother him in the least. Rascality is doubly odious when it borrows a good name; and the honest Democrat did not hesitate to bring his injunction down like a flail upon the heads of the dishonest Democrats who were betraying their trust.
We wish we could swap a couple of hundred “orators” for another myth like William R. Hearst.
Mr. Bryan’s Race in Nebraska
In a recent issue of his paper, Mr. Bryan says, referring to Mr. Watson:
The small vote which he received—a vote much smaller than Populists, Democrats, and even Republicans expected him to receive—shows either that there are few who agree with him as to the course of action to be pursued or that they did not have confidence in his leadership. It is not only more charitable, but more in accordance with the facts, to assume that the reformers had personal confidence in Mr. Watson, but did not agree with him as to the best method of securing remedial legislation.