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PAGE TWO
Public Opinion Throughout the Union
“ROOSEVELT FOR LIFE.”
The Interesting Heading in an Agri
cultural Paper.
(New York Journal.)
“Brown’s Farmer,” an able agricul
tural newspaper published in North
Dakota, prints on the front page a
picture of President Roosevelt, and
with the picture an article advocating
the election of Mr. Roosevelt to the
presidency for life.
The editor of Brown’s Farmer asks:
“Why not call a special session of
congress and amend the constitution
to permit of the election of a presi
dent for life?”
The editor goes on to say: “Could
we do better than install Theodore
Roosevelt in the presidency for life?
He is without a peer for ability, with
out a superior for knowledge, and a
patriot in every thought and aspira
tion. Under his wise, permanent ad
ministration the country would settle
down to a career of steady prosper
ity.”
This interesting suggestion will not
surprise those that have studied the
history of republics in the past. It
need not surprise those that know
something about human nature and its
tendency to abandon an effort.
The man who takes a good resolu
tion nine times out of ten gets pretty
tired of it after a while.
The people that undertake self con
trol and self government, as history
teaches us, are very apt to get tired
of it after a while. The average man
who starts out in business for him
self drifts back into a clerkship soon
er or later. Some people in America
got tired long ago of the effort of self
government. To begin with, those
that brought about the revolution and
freed the country from the control of
the English king, were attacked and
hated by all the so-called aristocrats
and respectable people of the day.
All the “old families” of that time,
the rich men with few exceptions,
were in favor of English rule and de
spised the idea of a republic.
In our day many men —the most
prosperous principally—are tired of
the idea of self government. A good,
strong king would suit them better.
Time will tell what kind of a race of
men this nation, with its mixture of
nationalities, has produced. Time will
tell whether or not this country is to
go back to the monarchial form of
government, and leave some better,
abler race to solve the problems of
republican government and develop a
nation of men capable of governing
themselves instead of living like chil
dren under the government of one
man.
We are not at present questioning
Mr. Roosevelt’s fitness to be president
for life, or what would be the same
thing, the first king of the United
States. Nor do we question the fitness
of his sons, carefully educated by him,
as rulers in this country. We do not
question the judgment of those who
declare that Mr. Roosevelt u the only
one among eighty millions capable
of filling the office of president satis
factorily.
The question that interests us is not
one concerning Mr. Roosevelt himself,
but one concerning the American peo
ple.
Are they going to drift gradually
away from the old standard, and give
up the effort of the last hundred years?
Will they gradually, with a third term,
and a fourth term, a life presidency,
and then a hereditary rulership, re-
peat the old familiar story of repub
lics on this earth?
Our humble and unimportant opin
ion is that the American people are
not quite ready for a monarchy yet,
and that neither those living nor their
children will see the abandonment
of th£ American system of govern
ment.
But there is no denying that many
men among us, some of them the
ablest, look upon republican govern
ment as a joke and would gladly
change for something “more stable.”
BRYAN TO TRY AGAIN.
(New York Globe.)
William Jennings Bryan spent a
quiet Sunday in Richmond. All he did
was to make a couple of speeches, give
the glad hand and flash the expansive
smile to all who called, and as a topoff
dictate an interview in which he said
he would probably again be a presi
dential candidate. Mr. Bryan’s unus
ual inactivity was because he was rest
ing in order to be physically fit when
he invades New York again this week.
He has an engagement to appear at
Albany, and while there will make
an address if his well-known aversion
to talking is overcome by sufficient
urging.
Mr. Bryan has not had an opportu
nity to tickle New York ears since
his friends engaged Madison Square
Garden in order that he might tell the
listening universe that there should be
federal ownership of trunk railways
and state ownership of branches.
There had been the most careful prep
aration and rehearsal. He had calmed
the turbulent waves on his way across
the sea by reciting his periods. Yet
the event was disappointing. Things
happened and didn’t happen that were
disquieting. In the first place, instead
of roaring applause there was, if not
a frost, at least a chill. Not many
voices became hoarse that night from
cheering. In the second and more im
portant place, one William Randolph
Hearst was present, and the Bryan
bodyguard was incensed by what they
identified as a clear attempt to steel
the meeting. Taken all in all, it was
a most heartbreaking affair. No won
der the Peerless One has wanted to
come back. No wonder he was fur
ther alarmed last fall when he waited
and waited in vain for the expected
message requesting him to take part
in the New York campaign.
Mr. Bryan has made little conceal
ment of his deep distrust of the Hearst
goings on. He has arrived to put a
quietus to them if he can. With his
approval an organization has been cre
ated whose object is to counterpoise
the privately owned Independence
League. Which is Hearst —ally or en
emy? It is time for a smoke-out. So
it is not difficult to see that the olive
branch, stripped of its twigs and
leaves, can be used as a club. The
national campaign is but a few months
ahead. Is Hearst to be in the ranks
or out of them? Does he purpose to
attempt to work the same game at
the national Democratic convention
that he successfully worked at the
Buffalo convention? Is he coming for
ward with the ultimatum: “Nominate
me or face a split"?
Thoughts of these things are taking
the few remaining hairs from the Bry
an head. Os what profit is it to at
tempt to make merry over Republican
family jars when there is sound of
breaking crockery In your own house
hold? Professional party optimist
though he is, Mr. Bryan knows that
WATSON’S WEEKLY JEFFERSONIAN.
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CHARLES W. FAIRBANKS.
Vice president of the United
States and candidate for the presi
dency.
the danger is not merely an imaginary
one. He knows why the Hearst news
papers so scrupulously refrain from
promoting the Bryan tradition—why
every Hearst hired man is sneering as
if an old-fashioned gold bug at a third
candidacy. He knows that Hearst
bolted McClellan, that he bolted in
California, that he would have bolted
in New York and Massachusetts last
year if the party had not succumbed.
He knows that this year in Chicago
poor ex-Mayor Dunne was hugged to
death, and that in many states the
business of building of building up a
hostile political organization goes
steadily on. If the Roosevelt and
anti-Roosevelt feeling in the Republi
can party is a cleavage the division in
the Democratic party is chasm.
Mr. Bryan is anxious to run again
for the presidency. This much is cer
tain. But not to run again and be de
feated. The hope that he could con
ciliate Hearst has died out, for
Hearst’s only notion of compromise is
the nomination of Hearst. So the un
fortunate man of Nebraska out of one
political mire only to stumble into an
other, has come on to see if there is
not some way to suppress Hearst or at
least fence him in below the Harlem.
THE GREED OF THE SOUTHERN
RAILROAD.
(The Vidalia Advance.)
This paper has tried to be just on
railroads, but this recent act of the
old greedy Southern Railway refus
ing track rights to Atlanta takes
all the charity out of our soul for
them. Let the people of Georgia rise
up and burst the combination which
the Southern holds. We can and must
do it.
Here is a targe population of people
along the Seaboard and M. D. & S.
Railways that need a through freight
and passenger connection to Atlanta.
They have a right to demand it.
From a conversation with an official
of the Seaboard a few days ago, the
editor of this paper learns that the
Seaboard realizes that the public de
mands a through train and that they
must furnish it. We also learned that
the Southern demanded such a tre
mendous price for trackage rights
from Macon to Atlanta that the Sea-
board could not afford to pay it. The
reason is easily seen for such actions
upon the part of the Southern. They
own the Central Railway and they do
not want a shorter route to the sea
to operate.
Will the Seaboard be thus bluffed?
Will the public stand such? Will the
Georgia legislature and Governor-elect
Hoke Smith stand such monopoly in
fair Georgia? We hardly believe it.
Let the Seaboard build from Macon
to Atlanta. Let the legislature burst
that Southern-Central combine. Then
and not till then will the people of
Georgia get any relief.
13 BANKERS IN ONE JAIL.
Thirteen rich ex-bankers locked up
in a jail. Such is the spectacle pre
sented at Leavenworth, Kan., where
the United States penitentiary draws
interesting recruits from various com
monwealths. The high financiers con
spicuous on the Leavenworth rolls,
dressed in the prison gray, wearing
each his penitentiary number and get
ting no privileges for his accomplish
ments in money matters, are these:
John P. Cooper, McGregor, Tex., who
loaned the First National Bank’s
money over the limit to cotton spec
tators.
Justus L. Broderick, Wilson C. Col
lins, Walter Brown, former president,
cashier and director of the First Na
tional Bank, Elkhart, Ind.
Alfred C. Parker, ex-cashier First
National Bank, Bedford, Ind.
Cyrus E. McCrady, ex-cashier First
National Bank, Seymour, Ind. An ex
cellent man at the Bertillon measure
ments.
Robert B. Taylor, banker-forger,
from Missouri, transferred from Jef
ferson City.
James H. Wood, another former
cashier from Indiana.
Frank G. Bigelow, former president
of First National Bank of Milwaukee,
who used $3,000,000 not exactly his
own.
Henry G. Goll, ex-cashier of said
Bigelow’s bank, will be released in
1913, a year after his superior.
George A. Conzman, president Vigo
County, Ind., National Bank, who vio
lated the banking taws.
Hermann Haass, transferred from
Joliet, 111., a Chicago banker who led
the detectives a chase to South Africa.
Francis B. Wright, former national
banker in Kane county, 111.
These financiers are employed in va
rious clerkships about the peniten
tiary. Their sole distinction in pris
on treatment lies in their being so
placed in the dining-room that pris
oners from the shops shall not rub
against them, Imparting such grime of
toil as might afterward be transferred
to the prison books the bankers keep.
(Boston Herald.)
Gov. Hughes scores again. He will
further consider the propriety of rais
ing the wages of the New York city
female school teachers to the level
of those of the men when it is pro
posed to treat the teachers of all oth
er localities in the state with equal
generosity, and when the women em
ployed in all other occupations are
similarly treated. Meanwhile his ve
to will stand.
(Washington Herald.)
A friend of the president says that
Mr. Roosevelt might be Induced to
accept another term in the event of a
war. The war inside the Democratic
party doesn’t count, however.