Speech delivered at Topeka, September 15, 1886.
MR. CHAIRMAN, AND LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: The campaign in Kansas this year
is what is called an “off-year” contest. The intense enthusiasm, the
fierce excitement, the great processions, with flags and banners and
music and resounding hurrahs; the marvelous interest, dwarfing and
absorbing all other concerns, and even paralyzing for months the
every-day business pursuits and industries of the people—all these will
be wanting in the campaign of 1886. And yet the interests involved in
the election that will be held in November next are as momentous, and
the issues depending on its result are quite as important to the State,
as were the interests and issues depending upon the result at the
ballot-box in 1884. The one officer who was to be elected then, and is
not to be chosen now, was the President. We are to choose, in November
next, as we did two years ago, a full board of State officers, seven
Congressmen, a State Legislature, a Judge of the Supreme Court, and
nearly half of our county officers. We are to elect men who will make
our laws, National and State, as well as men who will execute our State
laws. And as good local government really concerns each individual
citizen far more than do the acts of the President, because it touches
each and every citizen more directly, it has always seemed to me that
the people, if they have a proper regard for their own interests, ought
to regard the “off-year” elections with quite as deep interest, if not
more anxious solicitude, than they do the choice of a President.