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Show Weston Sees Need For Greater Politics Participation We need to encourage more businessmen, doctors, journalists and farmers to enter active politics and run for office, Joseph H. Weston, Democratic candidate candi-date for the United States Senate, Sen-ate, said this week. "Great political advances have only been made in this country when public questions have generated gen-erated enough heat to rouse the members of all occupations to take part. "The businessman who feels that he would be taking too great a risk to his business by running for state legislator will some day wake up to the fact that he has been taking a greater risk, all along, by NOT running for office. "The doctor who feels that he cannot afford to lose the money he would not earn in his profession profes-sion by serving a couple of months out of every two years in the state legislature might eventually wake up to the fact that he could lose his profession, itself, by not personally being at the capitol to make his voice heard at critical moments. "The journalist who feels that his position as an impartial reporter re-porter in his community would be endangered if he should take sides with one party or another by becoming a candidate for public office might well wake up to the fact that, by himself refusing to run for office, he has permitted our laws to be written writ-ten in a one-sided manner in which this lobby, or that lobby has had the upper hand, and in which the interest of the people as a whole, which the journalist is peculiarly well trained to represent, rep-resent, has been neglected, or even flouted. "Democracy cannot work in a country where men are afraid to 'pledge our lives, our property prop-erty and our sacred honor' to make it work. These are not just high-sounding words which the framers of our Constitution dreamed up in a moment of literary liter-ary reverie. They are very practical, prac-tical, and down to earth, and are effective in our politics today. "We people of both parties must make a special effort to encourage as many people as possible to run for ALL offices. A political party can only gain virility and strength when there is enough interest by many people peo-ple to effect spirited contests in the primaries, and a state or a nation can only gain strength when all public issues are strongly strong-ly debated in the general elections." |