Douglas Daily Dispatch

Southern Spoils System Dead

Chairman Brookhart of the senate patronage committee has disclosed telegrams, letters and affidavits relating to the patronage system in the south which furnishes a legitimate reason for President Hoover's announcement that he had lost confidence in the republican organization in several southern states, and inferentially that he would not be guided further by their recommendations.

Apparently in several southern states federal patronage has been auctioned off to the highest bidder with little evidence of attempt at concealment. The trouble with these states is they have been so overwhelmingly democratic that there was no republican organization to function until after an election when there were some political plums to be gathered.

The result of this spoils system has been such as to deprive many sections in the south of the service to which they were entitled by the federal government, and further has discredited the republican party, through its misrepresentation by the men who were republicans for revenue only.

The entire system has been broken up by the bold stand of the president, who should be encouraged to demand that federal offices in the south should be held by responsible and respectable citizens, to the end that the southern people could receive the benefit of federal service, and that the republican party should be freed of the stigma which has attached to it so long in the solid democratic south.

It is an unhealthful situation whenever either of the great parties becomes so powerful that it has nothing to fear from the opposition. The balance and check system of a republic is better served when the two parties are so evenly balanced that an unrighteous move by either one will promptly elevate the other into the position of responsibility and power.

Without considering its bearing on the ultimate result it may be said that the fact that Texas, North Carolina, Florida and Tennessee went republican last November will contribute in a large measure to better government in those states, as it will present to the dominant party of the past the necessity of functioning near 100 per cent or the opposition party may oust it from office.

The same lesson is drawn by the republican party through the fact that Massachusetts went democratic in the November election. Here is a threat to the dominant party that it can only hold the allegiance of its members by providing that character of government demanded.

While Herbert Hoover, by no stretch of the imagination can be called a politician, yet it is submitted that he is proving a better interpreter of the will of the people than many first class politicians who have preceded him in the White House.