Abstract

Purifying The Primaries

The exultation of a certain part of the Republican and Reform press in New York City over the row at Utica between the Tammany and anti-Tammany leaders, John Morrissey and John Kelly, is difficult to account for or explain. It is only six months since a precisely similar row, followed by a bolt on the part of Morrissey into the "Reform" party, ended in identifying the Republican and "Reform" cause for the time being with that of the most corrupt and shameless gang of politicians in the country. It would certainly be a most singular state of affairs if the primaries of one party remained pure democratic gatherings, while those of the other had become what Morrissey and Kelly describe them. In all the places where population is concentrated, the Republican primaries are of just the same kind as the Democratic, and produce just the same results.