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Newspaper Page Text
. ? 1 - . !. - J Ufrj ..pvxjf A$i '"W President Wilson who saw in a vie-' tory for the Hearst-Sullivan alliance a setback for President Wilson. And the two consecutive defeats for Rog er Sullivan, in the senatorial election last year and the city election Tues day, will put a decided crimp in Sul livan's political strength. No leader can keep on leading his party to de feat and retain his influence. The good soldiers get tired of being licked. It was nlain enough to a student of politics that the campaign mapped out to put Sweitzer over, after his election last year as county clerk,' was to combine German and Catholic voters. But it was poor planning. It didn't take into account the impor tant fact that no class of voters en joys being herded, stampeded or de livered. There is no man in Chicago who can solidify the Catholic vote, the German vote, the Irish vote, the Methodist vote or any other class vote, for the simple reason that there is no such thing as a class vote. There may be uniformity as to re ligion among Catholics, Methodists, Baptists and other sects, but when it comes to politics they split up just as other men and women do. The landslide for Thompson is proof enough that he received thou sands of Catholic and German votes, just as he received thousands of other kinds of votes. I should say that votes were driven away from Sweit zer by the circular and other appeals to class interests ouside of politics; and I have no doubt at all that Sweit zer got thousands of Protestant votes because of the belief among many that Protestants, or Thompson's friends and managers, worked the re ligious issue. The Sullivan generals made sev eral mistakes. Among them were the appeal to Germans because of the European war, and the attempt to make Lorimer an issue, which meant kicking him when he was down. Lor imer is a 'Catholic himself, and hasn't wholly lost his friends 'with his polit-, ical and financial fortunes; and the attacks on Lorimer certainly served to counteract other atempts to so lidify the Catholic vote. The Thompson generals started in on one very bad tactical mistake, but quickly backed up. Had the scheme of flooding Chicago with Republican orators from other states been car ried out, and a city election turned into a national election, the effect would have been to drive many Dem ocrats who wanted to lick Sullivan back to their party. The way the hostile Daily News jumped on that scheme indicated to me that some of the Republican gen erals were back of it whose personal political fortunes would have been helped by Thompson's defeat. I didn't consider the attitude of the newspapers as important, because I didn't think they could influence the result one way or another in this campaign. The issues outside of party politics went too deep for the intelligent voter to permit himself to beled around with a newspaper ring in his nose. I consider this a good thing for Chicago. It serves to open the eyes of public officials to the fact that the newspapers can't deliver the goods in politics, and that a public servant who is on the square and does his duty can tell all the newspapers to go hang. There never was a clearer illustra tion in Chicago of the fact that news papers can't lead the people where the people don't want to go. Another illusion was dispelled, and that is the influence of the loop. Pol iticians have considered the loop, with newspaper support, all power-. f ul. Tuesday's election indicates that it isn't anything to be afraid of. And I predict that with the incoming, council the newspapers are going to " have a mighty tough job on their y hands every time they attempt to sell out the people of Chicago to serve , the selfish interests of their adver tisers. , q.",' , A rJ! i. j-j.J...gf., . ...., , . MAMMMUMlMAi