Newspaper Page Text
PAGE TWO
Public Opinion Throughout the Union
NOW, MR. BRYAN, RETURN
THOSE CONTRIBUTIONS.
Mr. Bryan has thrown out his
friend Haskell in the fatuous hope
that he thus will clear himself per
sonally of the petroleum odor that
clings to his garments. Haskell was
Bryan’s intimate; he was Bryan’s
choice; he was selected by Bryan for
the very purpose whose fulfilment has
brought the Bryan candidacy under
the withering blight of Standard Oil.
Yet Haskell, still crying to the
heavens that he is not guilty, still
defying all men to detect .the stench
of oil upon him, is punished as un
ceremoniously as ever a gang of
lynchers punished a protesting horse
thief.
Why? Because fear is merciless,
and Mr. Bryan is pitiably afraid.
But neither the throwing of Haskell
to the wolves of public indignation
nor the smug pretense that Mr.
Bryan was ignorant of Haskell’s
subservience to the Standard Oil
Company will avail to restore to the
Democratic candidate that pose of
unsophisticated, innocence of all
evil which, patented and trade-mark
ed, he has carried through twenty
seven years of public life.-
The removal of Haskell was not
voluntary on Bryan’s part—unless an
act of utter cowardice can be counted
voluntary. And as for his solemn
assertion that he knew nothing of
Haskell’s black record, that is
annihilated by the letter of L. T.
Russell, editor of the Ardmore
(Okla.) Democrat, who shows that he
placed the whole ugly story of
Haskell in Mr. Bryan’s hands a year
ago.
Let us see just how much Mr.
Bryan has profited by this sacrifice
he has made on the altar of the great
god Fear.
The casting out of Haskell is a
confession that Haskell is an unfit
man to collect campaign contributions
for a national party.
But Haskell has collected cam
paign contributions.
If Haskell is unfit, the money that
he has collected is unfit. If Haskell
bears the taint of a criminal corpora
tion, the money that he has taken
from his criminal corporation friends
bears exactly the same taint. And if
Haskell is jettisoned to save the
leaky craft that he piloted into
Standard Oil harbor, so must be the
money that she has taken on board
there.
Mr. Bryan, you said in your tele
gram to President Roosevelt:
The selection of Governor Haskell
as chairman of the Committee on
Resolutions at Denver, and also as
treasurer of the Democratic National
Committee, had my approval and in
dorsement.
Therefore, your act in removing
Haskell must show that you believe
he is guilty. Mr. Russell says for
you that you KNEW he was guilty
a year ago. Haskell you have pitched
overboard, ruthlessly, as a man would
toes a bomb into the sea when it
threatened to annihilate him.
But do not think that you have
cleared yourself from so much as a
shadow of suspicion as long as one
penny of that Haskell-got money
remains in your campaign chest or
is expended in the attempt to make
you President of the United States.
Are you going to return those con
tributions, Mr. Bryan?—New York
American.
The Charleston News and Courier,
one of the campaign fund collectors
in South Carolina, has found by
experience that “so long as political
parties are dependent upon the
virtuous, moral and stainless for cam
paign supplies, they are going to be
hard up.” It’s a pretty good thing,
too. It is about time that the corrupt
ing influence of $5,000,000 campaign
funds were stopped. Correct minded
people can’t understand how so much
money as is asked for by both parties,
can be honestly employed.—Chatta
nooga Daily Times.
STATEMENT BY MR. BLACK
BURN.
B. M. Blackburn, secretary of the
state executive committee, in speaking
of the result in the state election,
said:
“Concerning the charge that Mr.
Brown and his friends attempted a
political deal by which the democratic
party in Georgia was to be delivered
to Mr. Watson, as a candidate for
President. Mr. Watson repudi
ates it, and Mr. Brown says
that it is preposterous. The
only basis for such a charge is in
the fact that Mr. Watson, on the
occasion of his notification at Atlanta,
stated in a public address that he
thought the people of Georgia would
like to give him a complimentary
vote —and that if they would give
him opportunity to register this vote,
unhampered by partisan political
prejudice, he, in the event of getting
a majority, would gladly yield the
electoral vote of the state to Bryan,
should the latter’s election depend on
it.
“The speech was made in the
hearing of thousands, and I do not
suppose there was a man in the audi
ence who had ever anticipated the
utterance. At the time I thought it
was a kindly display, and considered
from Mr. Watson’s point of view, I
still think so. His position was, that
although successful, his respect for
the traditions of his native state
would lead him to surrender the
electoral vote to a political enemy,
rather than do violence to the wishes
of his people.
* 1 The' populist state convention that
met to honor Mr. Watson indorsed
the democratic state platform —and as
one democrat, I am willing for them
to indorse our electoral ticket. In
that event Bryan would have had
counted for him every vote that was
cast for Bryan, together with those
cast for Watson, should he have
needed them, whereas Mr. Watson
could have ascertained by having his
name on a separate ticket than that
of Mr. Bryan (each heading demo-
Tfaffersonlan
cratic electors) how many votes each
received as a personal compliment.
“This, had it been approved, would
not have been a deal. It would, how
ever, have guaranteed a certain ma
jority for Bryan.
“If Mr. Watson must be abused
and maltreated in order that the dem
ocracy of the present organization may
be approved by some few self-ap
pointed custodians, I want it under
stood, I stand ready, as one democrat,
to be impaled. Mr. Watson took part
in the nominating campaign, and now
that the convention has acted he is
rendering signal service to the
nominees of that convention, a demo
cratic convention, it is true, but one
which grew out of a white primary
that did not bind the voter except as
to the nominees of that primary.”
THE HON. JOHN TEMPLE
GRAVES.
The Hon. John Temple Graves, of
Georgia and New York, who, it is to
be hoped, will visit our fair city to
make a speech during the campaign,
is editor of the Hearst papers and ex
officio candidate for the Vice-Presi
dency on the Hearstian ticket. We
are inclined to believe that the honor
able gentleman will fail of election to
the exalted office he presumably
covets, and that those who vote for
him will waste their ballots, but all
the same we admire and love the
man and wish him well. He is, in
our private view, the most subtle and
stupendous orator in the United
States today, and, in addition, he is
the greatest of living editors, pub
licists, patriots, journalists, rhetori
cians, platitudinarians, etc.
So far the Hon. Mr. Graves has
cavorted but little upon the hustings
—that is to say, in the present cam
paign—but we have more than once
discerned his fine Italian hand in the
quips and sillogisms o fhis associates.
Let it not be understood that we
accuse him of writing Mr. Hearst’s
speeches. As a matter of fact, such
a charge would be preposterous, for
Mr. Graves would refuse to stoop to
any such menial and anonymous labor.
What we are trying to say is that Mr.
Hearst’s association with Mr. Graves
has mellowed and polished him. The
Hearst of other days was crude and
commonplace. The Hearst of today
is full of wit, metaphors, poetry,
eloquence and parts of speech. Thus
doth a great mind send its radiance
into dark places.
The same still, soft, civilizing in
fluence is apparent in all the other
talented persons who aid Mr. Hearst
in his efforts to lift the plain people
from their slough of despond. Since
Mr. Graves moved from Georgia to
New York the poems of Mrs. Ella
Wheeler Wilcox have improved 80 per
cent. Her rhymes are more apposite,
her flights into the empyrean are
steadier and she has a firmer faith in
the intelligence, virtue and honesty of
the great masses. The same thing
might be said, again, of Miss Beatrice
Fairfax, the Rev. Thomas Gregory,
Groucho the Monk, Ambrose Beirce,
the Hall-Room Boys, James Creelman
and all the other eminent authors and
philosophers who contribute to the
Hearst publications. The brilliant
flash of the Gravesian eyes, like a
beam from some immovable, un
quenchable intellectual lighthouse,
leads them on to higher and better
things. And the steady thump of the
Gravesian heart —sounding, like some
mighty tocsin, the death knell of
Privilege, of Pusillanimity, of Pred
atory Pelf —gives them hope and
courage.
We promise the Hon. Mr. Graves a
hearty welcome to our fair city
should he visit us. If the schemes of
reform his mind has conceived and
formulated should be put into effect,
gladness would reign in this tear
soaked world. The pay of a day
laborer would be SI,OOO a day, with a
pension of $2,000 a day when he was
out of work. Membership in the Unit
ed States Senate would be a felony,
punishable by death. The heavens
would leak molasses. The whole
Atlantic would be full of American
battleships. Car conductors would be
doctors of philosophy. The circula
tion of the New York American would
be 1,000,000,000,000,000 a day. Only
the millionaires of the land would be
unhappy, for by Mr. Graves’ inexor
able decree they would have to go to
jail, friendless and shirtless, to break
stone in the hot sunlight for two and
a half meals a day.
What a pity the country is so un
appreciative as not to elect Mr.
Graves to something! Mr. Bryan’s
theories would usher in the millen
nium, but Mr. Graves’ reforms would
make a permanent heaven of thia old
earth.—New York Sun,
THE INDEPENDENCE PARTY.
Born of egotism, vaulting ambition,
wounded vanity and frustrated hopes,
William Randolph Hearst’s Inde-.
pendence Party at the city of Chicago,
in the state of Illinois, United States
of America, July 28th, 1908. The
accoucheur at its birth was the same
Mr. Hearst, and the wise men who
came from the east to see the thing
were John Temple Graves, Thomas L.
Hisgen and Charlie Walsh. The first
and the later employees of the same
Mr. Hearst. The ceremonies were
opened by a speech by Mr. Hearst.
The speech contained some pointed
things—a few fairly good epigrams
and many revamped platitudes. It
contains nothing very new, and few
things especially desirable. There are
some good points in it, however, but
like the gold in the rolling waves of
the sea, they do not amount to much.
This is probably the last convention
of the independence party, unless Mr.
Hearst is willing for the gratification
of his own vanity to furnish the
money to keep the enthusiasm. The
party is not needed —but if there were
need for it, the men who launched
this party are not men of such heroic
mould ns to breathe the breath of life
into an organization that will live.
The motive and the purposes are
lacking. And it will die because of
that fact.—The Issue.