Jasper County Democrat, Volume 10, Number 3, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 April 1907 — RATHER FUNNY. [ARTICLE]

RATHER FUNNY.

John Temple Graves is the very erratic editor of an erratic newspaper published in Atlanta, Georgia. At a banquet last week in Chattanooga, Tenn., Mr. Graves bad a speech prepared in which he intended to say that the Democratic party should, in its next national oonvetion, nominate Theodore Roosevelt as its candidate for the presidency. He intended to make the remarkable statement that Mr. Roosevelt is fighting "the economic battle that the Democratic party has been fighting for forty years.” - The tendency of some of President Roosevelt’s utterances has been toward some of the Demooratio contentions. But he has never, in a single instance, reached solid Democratic ground. On the other hand he stands for everything to which the Democratic party has been opposed for much more than “forty years.”

No man who favors the “principle of protection,” as embodied in the present tariff law, comes within a thousand miles of being a Democrat. And Mr. Roosevelt is an avowed "standpatter.” No man who favors the policy of paying subsides out of the pub-

Ho treasury to the ship trust and other private corporations come within a thousand miles of being a Democrat. And Mr. Roosevelt has repeatedly declared that be proposes to keep up the fight for the subsidy graft. No man who believes in “wiping out state lines” and centering imperial power in the government at Washington, thus overturning the whole theory of our institutions, has the faintest conception of the principles of the Democratic party.. And yet Mr. Roosevelt and his chief spokesmen are going full drive in that direction, But what is the use to consider further the ridiculous position of John Temple Graves. The Democratic party is not yet ready to commit premeditated suicide. Nor is it ready to make out of itself the most gorgeous political ass of all the ages. That Mr. Graves’ views were not in accord with the sentiment of the Democrats giving the banquet was proved by the fact that he was not allowed to make the speech. But as it had been given to the newspapers in advance it became public anyhow. Perhaps it is a good thing it did. Horace Greeley was a pretty good sort of a man in many respects, but he was a mighty poor Democrat and made an inglorious failure as a Democratic candidate for president.