He has the same passion for public service now that he
once had for the market. And he belongs to a race, which, in spite
of all our national catholicity on the subject of races, has never
yet produced its Disraeli in America, and to a party out of power,
perhaps for a long time, and he spent his youth learning a trade
which is not the trade he would follow now.
All of this accounts for his restlessness. He is still youthful and
has enormous energies and no occupation for them. He loves personal
publicity and has an instinct for it, not so keen as Hoover's or
Will H. Hays', but still keen.
Whither shall he turn? To the organization of his party? There he
may buy the right to be lampooned and in the end, if his party
succeeds, to be introduced into the Cabinet apologetically, as Hays
and Daugherty were, on the plea that the President must appoint a
number of party workers. To the Senate? It is a body which affords
escape from the boredom of small town life for men who have grown
rich on the frontier or in the dull Middle West. It carries with it
an excuse to live in Washington, some social position there, and a
title envied in Marion, Reno, Butte, or Salt Lake City. Senators
who start young serve long and obediently, suppressing all their
natural instincts for self-expression, and attain if they are
lucky the scant distinction of a committee chairmanship in a
legislature that has steadily tended toward submergence.
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