Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 8.djvu/229

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Roland Worthington.

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��in common with all the other wide- awake newspapers of that period, made rapid strides in circulation in conse- quence. Mr. Reuben Crooke followed Mr. Morss as managing editor of the paper, under Mr. Worthington's direc- tion. An indefatigable worker, a ready and well-informed writer, and a man who carried his conscience into all his editoral labors. Mr. Crooke well sus- tained the Traveller's reputation as a champion of sturdy Republicanism in politics, and kept it on the right side in all the moral reform movements of the time. He still remains with the paper as its first associate-editor. Mr. James.W. Clarke followed him as the Traveller's managing editor in 1879. ^'^^- Clarke is recognized by his brother journal- ists as wielding a pen of rare facility and brilliance ; in the line of political writing, his articles have a vigor and force and, when occasion offers, a hum- orous and caustic quality which have won for the Traveller a host of new friends and admirers, and confirmed the high favor in which it has so long been held by Republican readers.

The 1 rave tier has shown a truly re- markable foresight in discussing the political situations of the past few years. It seems to have divined, as if by intu- ition, the safe and the sagacious course for its party to take, and its counsels, not always taken, have been well-nigh invariably verified by the events. In i860 it was the first paper to suggest, as the successor of Governor Banks, the man who became the great war governor of the Commonwealth. When Governor Talbot's declination to accept a renomi- nation in 1879 necessitated the choice of a new standard bearer against the for- midable candidacy of General Butler, the Traveller brought forward the name of Honorable John D. Long. Against the united and strenuous oppo-

��sition of the other Republican dailies of Boston it urged Mr. Long's nomination upon the Convention, and he was nomi- nated and elected. In 1882 it warned its party against the nomination of Mr. Bishop, and urged the selection of Mr. Crapo as the opponent that year of Gen- eral Butler. The party disregarded its advice, and went to defeat as it had pre- saged. In 1883 again, against every other Republican paper in Boston, it insisted that Honorable George D. Robinson was the wisest nomination that could be made against Governor Butler, basing its argument on the claim, which it repeated over and over again, that necessarily Governor Butler must be met on the stump and talked down before the people, and that Mr. Robinson was emphatically the man for that service. The party came near to making another nomination, but at the eleventh hour the Traveller's advice was taken, Mr. Robinson was nomi- nated, and in the campaign which followed Governor Butler was beaten — exactly as the Traveller had said he would be — by Mr. Robinson's con- test with him on the stump. In the larger field of national politics the paper has shown the same intelligence and insight. A strong and consistent exponent of the radical or stalwart type of Republicanism, it, nevertheless, counselled the party with great ear- nestness against the continuance of the tactioTi fight precipitated in 1880-81 between the Grant-Conkling and Blaine-Garfield wings. Again and again it foretold the national overthrow of Republicanism if the feud was kept up. In the event of last November its wis- dom in this regard was fully borne out. When the Chicago Convention was about to meet in June last the Traveller appealed most earnestly to the New England delegates t5 join the Arthur

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