San Antonio Daily Light

SHORT STOPS.
What the People Are Saying
The politicians have been doing a good deal of talking but the people have been doing the thinking.
The claim that either side possesses all the virtue and honesty and ability to properly fill the county offices is regarded as nonsense.
The county campaign has been punctured by a great deal of personal abuse and slander, emanating from the Non-partisan side, but the fool primaries knocked all the vim out of the usual electioneering methods.
Even if we admit that the small clique of city hall politicians were sincere in their desire to secure an honest expression of the people before the election as to the candidates, it must be the verdict of every intelligent voter that they failed.
Even the inner circle of practical politicians who invented the sham primaries were appalled at the result. They found their own followers fighting like hungry dogs over a bone. The cost of the primaries to the successful candidate stripped them of as much hard cash as it would take to run a regular election.
So the conclusion is general that the primary election method had no superior claims over the cut and dried method of a number of candidates getting together and making up a ticket which the people afterward were called on to endorse.
After all it is the ballot box that the people judge of the fitness of candidates and not at the primaries, or even at the convention.
The canvass for county offices has been a disgusting exhibition of personal politics. One candidate Mr. Salliway, has been dragged into court on a serious charge; this was evidently done to destroy his chances before the people and not to further the ends of justice. It was also done to break up the ticket on which his name appeared in conjunction with the names of citizens of unapproachable character. It was even proposed by supporters of the Non-partisan ticket that Salliway be dropped in advance of a trial. This was done to destroy the entire ticket.
The people have been disgusted with the malicious character of the assaults made upon candidates. It is the way of personal politics.
The claim that the Non-partisan ticket presents any greater guarantee of reform in county affairs than the Equal Taxation ticket is without foundation. The San Antonio Express will not have the job, nor will the campaign committee of the Non-partisan ticket. It will be left to the men elected.
The duty of the voter is plain. The two tickets are in their hands, the cry of fraud, of crime, or of reform is only the campaign argument of people who have not brains enough to discuss a public issue, or who, living in glass houses think the only way to avoid suspicion is to throw stones.
Pablo Cruz, editor of El Regidor has handed the mayor $24.65, it being ten per cent. of his October collections which he donates to the Galveston sufferers.