The More Things Change ... 1887 and 2009

In the first issue of Henry George's weekly newspaper, The Standard, posted recently at http://savingcommunities.org/docs/george.henry/standard0101.html appear these three paragraphs, one right after another:

There is an active and successful effort in progress to raise a fund for the widow of the late Senator Logan and up to Tuesday over $20,000 had been subscribed. The money will be invested in Mrs. Logan's name in United States four per cent. bonds.

The federal commission of agriculture complains to Governor Oglesby that the Illinois Live Stock commission has interfered to prevent the success of the efforts by the general government to suppress pleuro-pneumonia among cattle in the Chicago stock yards. Unless there is a change, the commissioner says he will be compelled to admit that the Illinois authorities are not enforcing all reasonable measures for stamping out the disease. This matter vitally concerns consumers of western beef.

There will be a sharp and eager competition for the seat in the United States senate rendered vacant by the death of Gen. Logan. Gov. Oglesby announces that he will not be a candidate. The probability is that the largest purse will secure the prize.

That's dated January, 1887, 121 years ago.

And several pages later, another reference to Senator Logan, in the context of remembering him and the late President Chester Arthur ... search that page for his name.  It ends with:

This and other phenomena, some, perhaps, much to be regretted, we shall see again - so long as our preachers in the press and on the hustings preach their gospel of trifling and insincerity. The contrast which a few short months, even weeks, has shown in the treatment of men like Arthur and Logan - the swift, shuddering change - from calumny to commendation, from the extreme of depreciation before, to the extreme of adulation after, cannot be seen without pain. If we were sincere before, can we be deemed sincere after? More than this, we should gravely consider other consequences that must come from the recent revolts of the people in their political action against the influence of those who have led, and who when inspired by candor and wisdom, might again lead the people. Would it not be a step in return to that high possibility, an advance toward the re establishment of an influence, whose decadence all must regret, to avoid, in dealing with our Arthurs and Logans, the slime as well as the roses, to be just to the living as we are more than just to the dead?