He added that in that way, the more objectionable the measure,
the more support it would get. The press of the country,
almost without exception, supported the President. The reasons
which applied to each improvement were not well understood
by the public. So the conductors of the newspapers naturally
supposed the President to be in the right in his facts. The
Democratic newspapers were eager to attack Republican measures.
Where there were factions in the Republican Party, the Republican
papers of one faction were ready to attack the men who belonged
to the other. The independent newspapers welcomed any opportunity
to support their theory that American public life was rotten
and corrupt. So when the question came up whether the bill
should pass notwithstanding the objections of the President,
there was a storm of indignation throughout the country against
the men who supported it.
But the committees who had supported it and who had reported
it, and who knew its merits, and the men who had voted for
it in either House of Congress, could not well stultify themselves
by changing their votes, although some of them did.
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