Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 39, Number 37, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 January 1907 — POLITICAL COMMENT [ARTICLE]

POLITICAL COMMENT

To Make the Democracy Feebler. If the centenarian Morgan of Alabama has his way, the Democratic party will be pushed as far into the background in the voting in 1908 as it was In 1864. Morgan demands that the next Democratic National convention declare in its platform that the "Democratic party of the nation is aud always has been a white man’s party.” As nobody has been trying to make the democracy a red man’s, a yellow man’s or a black man’s phrtv, the try will have some difficulty in grasping tbte pertinence of this proclamation. Neither the antediluvian from Alabama nor any other man from his section has been doing anything for the negro in recent times which would make anybodybelieve that the democracy was beginning to lean toward equal political rights for all races. Therefore, he may have some trouble In convincing the Democratic convention a year and a half hence that It ought to flaunt its disregard of the organic law openly before the country. Sitting close to Morgan in the Senate is a man from South Carolina who is also opposed to all the war amendments. A few years hence, If Morgan is alive at that time, be may be re-enforced -by Vardaman of Mississippi, who has started out to repeal the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments. Tillman and Vardanian will probably, If they are delegates to the convention of 1908, favor Morgan’s declaration that the “democracy of the nation is and always has been a white man-’a.^nrty.» An immediate effect of the adoption

cratic platform would be that that party would become even more sectional and diminutive than It has been in recent times. In 1904 the democracy carried no States outside of the South, and did not hold even all the South. The great North an<| West, which contain the brains, the wealth and the power of the nation, repudiated and cast out the Democratic party. The few members of the Senate from the North and West which the Democratic pasty held even through the Roosevelt landslide two years ago are now taken away from them. As a result of the elections a few weeks ago the Democrats lost the Senators from Colorado, Idaho and Montana; Republicans will take the places of Patterson, Dubois and Clark. In the entire country there Is no Democratic Senator except from the Southern States, and in some of those States, as in Delaware and West Virginia, the Democrats are excluded. Throughout that part of the country which has two-thirds of the population, three-fourths of the wealth and nine-tenth of the social and political Influence the Democratic party is branded as an alien organization which deserves the contempt of the American people. Alabama’s ancient Morgan is working to make his party feebler and more unpopular than, it lias been even In recent years. The effect of his gratuitous reversion toward barbarism would be to destroy the faint chance which the Democratic party has of gaining any foothold in any of the important States of the North or West. Nobody In North or West Is asking social equality for the black man, but those regions allow him at the polls all the political rights which the law has guaranteed to him. From the yellow, the red and the black man the Republican party asks no favors. The Republican party gives a square deal to everybody, regardless of the country of his birth or the color of his skin. Morgan’s program would cover the democracy with a ridicule which would make northern and western Democrats ashamed In this twentieth century to east their ballots for a party with sixteenth century alms and prejudices.—St. Louis Globe-Democrat.

General Increase of Waiven. Wage increases are coming so thick and fast that it Is almost impossible to keep track of them. ’ Closely following the $8,000,000 Increase of the payroll of the Pennsylvania Rullroad Company a $10,000,000 increase of the pay : roll of the United States Steel Corporation. Increased payrolls are the order of the day on nearly all the railroads md In practically all branches of iniustrlal production. Business Justifies it. A condition of unexampled prosperity compels It. When three Jobs ran only find two men, labor's rewards must l»e enlarged. Everybody is counting upon a continuation of this state of things. But how-jsvonld It be If Immediate tojriff revision had been recommended by the President and ordered by Congress. Does anybody believe that in such circumstances these hundreds of millions of increased wage payments wouldwiow be piling up? No;.nobody believes that. Even the most Implacable “progressive” or the most Inveterate free-trader knows, must know, that while tariff revision downward is going on there can be no such thing ns Increase of wnges. In tji'it case wages would have to be lowered, not increased. —American Economist.

As to nrrakdnnrna. She—Would you rather walk or ride there? He —Well, I’ve l>een out Id the motor car ao much lately that I think I’d rather ride for a change.—Puck. . ' ? #•