Watch Yourself Go ByField, Al. G. (Alfred Griffith)
General
Watch Yourself Go By
Field, Al. G. (Alfred Griffith)
Circus performers -- United States -- Biography; Field, Al. G. (Alfred Griffith), 1848-1921; Wit and humor
This became an issue in politics and religion. Many went to church
seeking consolation and were forced to listen to political speeches.
Preachers forgot their calling; instead of preaching love, they
advocated hatred. The German saloon, being lowly and harmless, must go.
In their stead came the mirrored bar with its greater influence for the
spread of intemperance but clothed with more respectability outwardly.
Public officials were embarrassed, cajoled and threatened. The
malcontent, the meddler, the demagogue, had injected their baneful
innovations into the political life of Columbus.
It is related the Indians would not live as the Puritan fathers desired
they should. They would not accept the dogmas and beliefs of the whites.
At Thanksgiving time, a period of fasting and prayer, the Puritan
fathers held a business meeting and these resolutions were adopted:
First, resolved, that the earth and the fullness thereof belong to God.
Second, that God gave the earth to his chosen people.
Third, that we are those.
They then adjourned, went out and slew every redskin in sight.
Politically, the same fate was meted out to the peaceful citizens of the
South End. The sceptre had passed from the hands of the sturdy old
burghers of the South End. In their stead came a crop of office holders
who, striving for personal popularity, catering to the meddler and
busybody--a class who had no business of their own, but ever ready to
attend to that of others. From a willing-to-be governed and peaceful
city, discontent and confusion came. Every tinker, tailor or candle
stick maker, every busybody in the city took it upon themselves,
although without training, ability or experience, to advise how the city
should be governed.
In the new order of things, representatives were elected noted only for
their talking talents, the consequence of which was that every official
considered that he was entitled to talk and talk on every subject
whether he understood it or not.
There was a custom among the warriors of Rome that when one fell in
battle, each soldier in his command cast a shovelful of earth on the
corpse. Thus a mighty mound was formed.
And so it was in the new order of things in Columbus. When a question of
moment came, every official endeavored to shower his eloquence upon it
until it was buried under a mass of words. The busybodies who so greatly
interfered with public matters were from the grocery wagon sections and
were addicted to chewing cloves. Those from the West Side chewed
tobacco. All ate peanuts. Special appropriations were requested by John
Ward, city hall janitor, to remove the peanut hulls after each talk
fest. And thus it was that peanut politics and peanut politicians came
to be known in Columbus. Peanut politics like all infections, spread
until the whole political system became affected. If the depot had been
located in the South End there would be no North End today.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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