Jasper County Democrat, Volume 11, Number 13, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 June 1908 — D. B. HILL SCORES BRYAN [ARTICLE]

D. B. HILL SCORES BRYAN

HE SAYS THERE IS NO LONGER A DEMOCRATIC PARTY. Former New York Leader, Departing for Europe, Says Good Things of Gov. Johnson. New York, June 12— David B. Hill, former United States senator and for a long time leader of the Democratic party in this state, sailed for Europe Thursday on the steamer Baltic. Discussing his retirement from active politics, Mr. Hill said: ‘

“There is no Democratic party. When I met the late Gov. Altgeld in a little room up a back stairs in a small Chicago hotel shortly before the first so-called Bryan convention I told him, that the policies which he represented would drive the Democratic party to hell. Then, when he begged for another try four years later, I said: ‘You are most there; stop before you have absolutely ruined the party,’ but Bryan was nominated, as I saw the futility of a minority report with only ten votes to back me.

“I admit that the Republican party is badly disorganized at the present time. Both parties are disorganized. There was an opportunity, but I fear that it has been overlooked.

“The key of this political campaign should be ‘Taft, the candidate of political patronage.’ What else is he? He is put before the people as a candidate by the ‘power of political patronage.’ Nothing else. “Now both sides in the coming political struggle will have to go to the masses for their votes. They must draw from the masses, and what better man could stand against the candidate representing the ‘power of patronage’ than John Johnson, who spent his boyhood days in a county poorhouse? Think of It! Torchlight processions with banners reading ‘John Johnson, the poorhouse candidate.’ And from what I have been able to learn, Mr. Johnson is more than a mere near-to-the-people candidate. Ho is a well-balanced man and an able man.

“Every time Bryan says ‘I kept the faith,’ it makes me smile. He has kept the faith indeed. He kept it out in Nebraska, his own state, which is now Republican to its political core. “The Democratic party never wanted Mr. Bryan. Mr. Bryan wanted the Democratic party. He forced himself on the party in 1896, and again on what was left of the party in 1900, and now in 1908 he calls himself the Democratic party, and says: ‘I have kept the faith.’ ”