Mexico Weekly Ledger

The St. Louis Republic, in a column article headed "Is office seeking a disgrace," endorses the position taken in reference to this matter by Hon. Champ Clark, member of Congress from this district, as follows:

The Republic is very glad to see that Hon. Champ Clark is not disposed to attempt to bring his Democratic constituents into public contempt because one in every thousand of them is an applicant for office. Congressman Clark says that he worried them a good deal (and so he did when he wanted an office), and that now when he has secured it, it is only fair that they should worry him.

This is the correct view-the only correct view. Nothing is more disgusting than to see a professional office-seeker, a man who has been running for office persistently for the last 20 years; who has made every dollar he has in the world out of the opportunities office gave him; who without office and until he got it was hard put to earn as much as $2,000 a year; who when he wanted office went out and pulled wires and hustled and drank beer with the boys and shook hands with everybody and smiled and smiled, and wrote bushels of letters and did everything possible to get the little office he was running for so as to make it a stepping stone to a bigger one—nothing is more disgusting, we say, than to see such a man when he has already got into the last office he is ever likely to hold turning round on applicants for minor positions and treating them as if they were utterly contemptible. This is what has disgusted us with Carter Harrison, and we propose to stay disgusted with him until he mends his ways and opens the doors of the Mayor's office of Chicago for the transaction of all public business, including the highly important public business of filling the offices with responsible, honest, competent Democrats.