Seattle Daily Post Intelligencer

LETTER
FROM
BROOKLYN
Suggestions to Young Men.

Brooklyn, N. Y., June 30, 1884.

Editor Post Intelligencer:

I cannot forbear the expression of a sentimental interest in your Territorial affairs, and there are many here in the East like me. Beecher said in our Academy of Music, after visiting you, that Washington Territory was his special pet, and if he were a young man he would settle there. Somehow all the Utopians involuntarily turn their eyes to you, looking upon your communities as the probable fulfillment of Bishop Berkeley's prophecy:

Westward the star of empire takes its way;
The four first acts already past,
A fifth shall close the drama with the day,
Time's noblest offspring is the last.

Does it strike your young men who are now forming the "Young Men's Party" that their forthcoming State will be, territorially, the last in the progress of empire around the earth, and in that they have a representative responsibility in the eyes of the world and especially of this nation? First the unwritten mystery of Chinese antiquity, then the Persian empires, then the Grecian, then the Egyptian, then the Italian, then the European, then the American, and now in your new State the final light of government answers across the Pacific, the waning fires of the Old East.
In this view what appeals to the public spirit of your young men! Let them take good heed and be worthy the epoch. You have natural advantages second to none round the globe. In this, your generic period, are wisdom, virtue and patriotism giving the mold and cast to future institutions.
Is your "Young Men's Party" adequate to the occasion?
Many people would like to know the precise age qualifying one for membership in that club. Is it deemed that certain number of years destroys man's utility and safety as a citizen?
I have heard it said, "Old men for counsel." I think in politics and government administration the odds are against young men. They have the ladder of public favor and political ambition yet to climb, which often upsets their untried powers and subjects them fatally to temptation and corruption.
They are always callow and visionary, and often Weak.
If we must classify public eligibility by extrinsic personal conditions we may have an "Old Man's Political Club," "Bald Headed Men's Political Club," "Lean Men's Political Club," etc. What has been the age at which you have fixed men out there generally as being untrustworthy in public affairs? No; the "Young Men's Party" is wrongly named.
Let us have a "Reform Party," or, what is more pat, a "Third Party." Inasmuch as it has come to pass that our political impulses in this country have crystallized into two national parties and both having fallen into machine methods—corruption, intolerance and bigotry—a third party is our normal number in order to avoid the "choice of two evils," to have a healthy competition and to put the two standard parties upon their good behavior in deference to this balance of power. Why exclude from such a party men who have attained the ripeness of experience, intellect, courage and virtue? That is as bad as the old party strict lines that have, with semi-barbarity, ignored useful citizens who would cherish the public interest because they happen to belong to the minority party. We had this "young men's" movement here in the East, and after proving their inefficiency they were analyzed down into "soreheads."
Had they courageously and practically given their intelligence and virtue to the existing political organizations of their peers, they could have seized control of the machinery for the public good and could have ousted the "bums" forever, because virtue is in the majority by a vast number. But not desiring to mix in the dirty work of politics—for which daintiness nobody will condemn them, they formed, each within their own party, a "Young Republican Club" and a "Young Democratic Club," and after banquets at $10 a ticket, swallow tails, lapel nosegays, silk stockings, speeches and loud reports, they feel ridiculously flat, being utterly ignored by the ward politicians in every convention and every nomination. Had they united and formed a third party of all reform elements, leaving out the question of age, dudeism and party lines, they could accomplish something practical.
To save our institutions party lines must be effaced, except where party represents a necessary principle. In town and provincial politics an eye to local interests is the course of wisdom, and to bringing to bear upon public administration all the best merit of our citizenship, regardless of party lines That is being learned here to our cost of many unnecessary millions of dollars in this one city. Thus your young men. and old men, taking warning from older communities, now that you are in an inchoate political condition, and are giving mould to the construction of a future noble State, and to the happiness of millions of people, the first advice that would strike an "old rounder" is to break up early every semblance of political yoke, machinery and caucusing. Watch for back-office schemers and planners; disperse cliques, personal habits and in your organic smash "slates," and demand by your laws that all political movement and open public meeting, where the best proposition shall be spontaneous and in men can win; that in the forum; that it is the tribune, for the people cannot be bribed, the people cannot "dicker," the people will not oppress. In the East political methods have become so perfect a science, and the people have so yielded to it, that only the most robust, idle and brutal can afford the time and energy to keep by the "machine the year round.
By this routine a dozen practical ed wishes of thousands of good men of their party.
Young men of Washing-ton Territory. crush this octopus or devil fish in the egg.
As you have pride in your State and value your future of party, at the front, until your constitution shall be formed within, guided by the mistakes of the older States You may incorporate healthy germs; consecrate your Territory to Puritanism, and cast out forever your present sproutings of the political cancers of rum, monopoly, corporate impositions and political rings.
To do all this will require a premium on the wisest, purest. bravest, staunchest men. Beware of proscription and of ostracism, as well as of self-assertion and combinations.
When you shall have presented to the people of this Union the purest as well as last gem in our tiara of States you will be our Mecca.

WILLIAM H. EMSTREET

Making Arrangements.—Mr. Lincoln, the chief clerk of the general passenger department of the western division of the Northern Pacific Railroad, returned accompanied by A. D. Edgar, the assist-ant general freight agent. They have been adjusting the rates on the new branch of the Northern Pacific Railroad, running from Tacoma to Seattle, which began operations on Sunday last. —Portland News.

To Shoppers.—The Temple of Fashion on Marion street is closing out at sacrifice prices, and ladies wishing anything in the line of hats, feathers, downers, silks, satins, plushes, ribbons and millinery of all kinds, should not fail to visit that establishment.
R
Love conquers the lover, but Hxx.rr's baNprziow Tonic conquers the liver. 27