The Evening Times

A REPUBLICAN VIEW
OF WARD COUNTY
POLITICS

Minot's Municipal Campaign
There Similar to That of
Grand Forks.

Special to The Evening Times.

Minot, April 2.--It is not the purpose of this article to reflect the local conditions of Minot as they may relate to the municipal conflict which is now in progress. However, it might be well to say that the present municipal campaign has a bearing in an indirect way upon county and state politics.

It has always been held that the fundamental principle of state organizations, from the date of the signing of the declaration of independence to the present time, has rested upon local organization. Local organization, we take it, consists in the binding together of a number of people whose object is to delegate their power and influence to a higher power. Destroy that influence, take away that power, and I would like to have you tell me where a better political condition could be obtained, speaking from a state or national platform.

Minot, like Grand Forks, has injected into the municipal campaign an element that borders upon socialism as against the principles laid down in the republican platform that has controlled the political destinies of this union for many years. I don't know whether social democracy will win in Minot or not. I do not know whether the same principles will predominate in Grand Forks or not, but I do know that regardless of individuality, if they do, two links have been broken in the great chain that has bound for a number of years the people of this hemisphere to one of the grandest forms of government that has ever existed under the sun.

Now let us pass for a moment from local conditions, as they relate to city governments and take up a more interesting subject. The political records of this state, as published in the blue book, will bear out the statement that Ward county stands today before the people of North Dakota, regardless of political faith, the banner republican county of the state.

Whatever may have been the extent of its internal troubles, it has stood nobly by the choice of the republican convention. It may have taken time after time delegations that have been divided among themselves and in consequence of that division not been able to receive a single crumb from the convention table and yet it has been faithful to every obligation and true to every trust.

Conditions in Ward county during the last few years have been peculiar. The controlling influences have not at all times reflected the disposition of the republican party, but on the other hand the disposition of a certain element whose main object has been to disrupt.

Another element that seems to have operated as a disturbing one has its existence in a faction who think that Alex McKenzie is posing as a dictator, all of which is not true. Alex McKenzie has never been in Ward county, he has never associated himself with anyone who controls the political destinies of the county, or ever expressed a desire to do so. The only man who has ever done anything for Ward county is H. C. Hansbrough, who recently secured the location of a federal court at Minot.

The location of this court means a whole lot to Ward county inasmuch as it amounts to a recognition by the general government that Minot and its associated country has reached a point in its commercial history where it is entitled to something out of the ordinary. We take it that the people of our country who have received this gift cannot afford at this time to smite the hand that offered.

Minot and Ward county have a duty to perform, and that duty consists of unwavering fidelity to the principles of the republican party and in the event that neglect marks their disposition they alone will be responsible for whatever result may follow. It is too late for Ward county to expect to succeed by building up a new party, by toying with the democratic cat that for years has been mewing in the pathway of every republican that has been capable of casting a vote since the organization of the county.

Ward county cannot succeed under any circumstance in the political sense except by assisting in the maintenance of the principles reflected in the national platform.

-A Republican.