Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 40, Number 16, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 November 1907 — The Political Pot. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

The Political Pot.

The Associated Press report of thf speech -delivered by W. J. Bryan at : Jamestown, Va., quoted him as saying that the great metropolitan dailies art controlled by the trusts and their columns are open to the highest bidder. Mr. Bryan later denied that this was a correct report, asserting that he made the qualified statement that many of the metropolitan dailies were so controlled. [ In a leadiaig editorial for the current Federatiouist, President Gompers of the ■American Federation of Labor describes Secretary Taft as “the injunction standard bearer,” and takes the position that no one can compel a laboring man to buy where he does not want to buy. He says that Taft’s contention in regard to the boycott would leaid to tbfc dispersion and forcible breaking up by court orders of every assemblage of workingmen, however innocent or lawful their purpose, and to the nullification of all their agreements. Editor Watterson of the Louisville Courier-Journal, in a New York interview, said that old party lines had ceased to exist and that we must now have a new party, He asserted that Roosevelt had destroyed what was left of the Republican party% and that Rooseveltism was like Bryanism in 1896. Bryan would have Mexicanized our currency, but Roosevelt’s re-election would Mexicanize the nation. Bryan he characterized as a destroyer of plans and a breaker of images. Watterson says he is out of politics for good. Before the American Bankers’ Association at Atlantic City, Charles Emory Smith, former Postmaster General, commended the efforts of President Roosevelt to put the big combinations of capital under control of the laws, but said that some of the co-called awakening of the public and the anti-corporation agitation was “a wild and hysterical crusade against all colossal enterprises and all corporate activity.” He thought there was a call for sober judgment and that it was senseless to decry all combinations. He concluded that regulation itself might need to be regulated and that the craze for fantastic Interference in some States would in due time run its course. I From his prison cell former Mayor Schmitz of San Francisco has directed tile movements of the Union Labor pftHf and controlled it* convention so as to prevent a fusion with the reform elements favorable to the election of the present 1 Mayor, Dr. Taylor. • The Republicans have nominated a machine man named Ryan, thus further splitting up the city vote, but the Democrats have renominated Mayor Taylor, and they have been joined by the indepaadent reform organizations. All factions except the Lqbor party have renominated District Attorney L&ngdon.