The Voice Combined With La Voz Latina

A LETTER TO GOVERNOR
LANDON

DEAR ALF:

Two points concerning your candidacy have been bothering me, and from the wide open desert spaces of Arizona I am appealing to you for first-hand information.

I am informed that having balanced the Kansas budget, with the help of upwards of four hundred millions of Federal funds, you are now offering your services as a National budget balancer and financier. Have you considered the fact that in balancing the National budget you cannot expect any outside help (Europe is busted) and naturally, the first question is:

HOW WOULD YOU PROCEED TO BALANCE THE NATIONAL BUDGET?

From your radio broadcast I gather that you consider the Republican party eminently and alone capable of financing and balancing the National budget. Have you ever looked at the record? Let's take history off the shelf and brush the dust from it.

The first mention of Republican financial ability is in connection with military supply contracts during the civil war and right then the Republicans seemed to have acquired the financial ideas that have persisted ever since. From then until Grant's administration and through the Reconstruction and Carpet Bag period there was ample practice to perfect the vicious ideas.

During the eight year regime of the Republican politicians' first ideal president, Grant, Republican financial genius blazed high throwing a lurid light of disaster across financial skies. The names of Jay Gould, Jim Fisk and Ferdinand Ward became household words and the great CREDIT MOBILIER scandal furnished headlines for the newspapers. The politicians wanted four more years of Grant and urged him for a third term, and this caused Henry Adams (grandson of John Adams), historian, to comment that it was a "time of disgustingly vulgar political corruption."

Through the intervening years, especially during Cleveland's administration, Republican financial genius was rather subdued, but it kept in practice for the next grand opportunity, which came with McKinley's administration and the Spanish-American war, when the Embalmed Beef scandals gave evidence that "R. F. G." was still on the job.

During the regimes of the first Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, Republican Financial Genius sang rather sweet and low, but upon the election of the Nation's second ideal politicians' president—Warren G. Harding—R. F. G. broke into a loud and boisterous chorus. The famous Ohio gang had the stage all set and started to produce what was intended for a comic opera, but the production wound up as a tragedy. The actors were Daugherty, Doheny, Fall, Forbes, Miller, Jess Smith and Cramer, and the public got Tea Pot Dome. Suicide and sudden death stalked the streets of Washington and Harding's untimely and unexplained death robbed the politicians of a second term for their ideal.

Mellon's income tax refunds, foreign loans and bank failures during the Great Engineer's administration are too recent for us to forget.

And now, Mr. Landon, comes question number two.

WHAT DO YOU FIND IN THE RECORD TO RECOMMEND THE REPUBLICAN PARTY AS FINANCIER AND BUDGET BALANCER?

Hoping to hear from you soon, I am

Yours truly,

MIKE, "the taxpayer."

c/o The Voice.