Date:    Thu, 7 May 1998 11:43:55 EDT
<br>From:    Bapopik <Bapopik[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]AOL.COM>
<br>Subject: Honest John
<br>
<br>     In the new movie BULWORTH, Warren Beatty plays a senator who does a
<br>remarkable thing--he tells the truth.
<br>     SAFIRE'S NEW POLITICAL DICTIONARY has an entry for "honest graft," but
<br>that's it as far as honesty goes.
<br>      The first citation for "Honest Abe Lincoln" dates from 1858 in the DA.
<br>      The RHHDAS dates "honest John" (an honest man) from 1884, although there
<br>is a Washington Irving citation from 1807 that's noted.  The complete and
<br>utter truth is "honest-to-God" or "honest-to-John."  Of interest also is the
<br>entry for "honest Injun," which has a first citation from 1851.
<br>       This is from the PITTSFIELD SUN (MA), 21 October 1841, pg. 2, col. 4:
<br>
<br>THE PROMISES OF JOHN DAVIS.
<br>      The whigs call their candidate "_honest_ John."  So Othello called Iago
<br>"honest, _honest_ Iago."  The working-men remember "_honest_ John's" speech on
<br>high wages in Congress.  He told them the sub-treasury was the sole cause of
<br>low wages.  Only put the whigs in power and they would repeal it, and up wages
<br>would go!
<br>      The working-men believed him, put the whigs in, the sub-treasury was
<br>repealed, and where are "honest John's" high wages?  No where.  The workmen
<br>find their wages cut down, their labor lengthened; it costs them more to live;
<br>they get less for their labor, and _instead of ten hours, work from twelve to
<br>fifteen, and are forbidden to open a letter or read a newspaper, while under
<br>the ye of their task-master's at the Springfield armory!_  This is the result
<br>of "honest John's" promises to them to get their votes.
<br>      The motto under which "honest John" was chosen Governor last year,
<br>was--"ROAST BEEF AND TWO DOLLARS A DAY."  (I'd vote for the vegetarian
<br>candidate--ed.)  The working-men who were deceived by this, get neither, and
<br>are paid less and work more, than under the sub-treasury administration.  We
<br>must just ask "_honest_ John" in his own words, which he used to sneer at Mr.
<br>Van Buren in his last Governor's Message:
<br>     "What have become of all your fair promises?  Wages have been lowered,
<br>and where is the prosperity you promised us?  Where the golden era of
<br>fruition?  _The aching eyes of many are still stretched in vain after it,
<br>while it recedes like the mirage of the desert before the weary traveller_."
<br>     That's a fact, "honest John," you never prophecied truer.  When are the
<br>working-men to have that "_roast beef and two dollars a day_" you promised
<br>them, if they would make you Governor?--_Boston Post_.
<br>
<br>     "Roast beef and two dollars a day" is regrettably not recorded in most
<br>places, but non-Oprahs can check out SAFIRE'S entry for "chicken in every
<br>pot."
<br>