Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 41, Number 2, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 September 1908 — IF BRYAN WERE PRESIDENT [ARTICLE]

IF BRYAN WERE PRESIDENT

Bryan's appearance in Indiana last week renewed the excuse of some of his faint-hearted supporters this year that his election could not hurt the country because any fad he might futther in the White House would be blocked by the Republican senate. This excuse is not plausible. And surely the people will not approve of presenting him with the presidency and its $200,000 salary, excluding perquisites, on the pretext that he could do no harm. But that apart. Bryan as president could do much harm, passively as well as actively. His election would affect general industry injuriously. Creating distrust, it would keep idle the mills now idle and tend to shut down factories all over the country now running. Bryan is still a disturbing factor, political and commercial. Business would not be crippled for years by his election. Business can get in harmony with its environment, even when that is restrictive, but for at least one-fourth and maybe one-half of his term it would be crippled by the lack of confidence in the Immediate future. While it halted the whole land would suffer, farmers as well as factory workers. But that is not the only argument against even the "new Bryan.” True, the Republican senate would block any vicious or unworthy legislation emanating from a presidential message. If such blocking were entirely successful, one can realize quickly that national legislation, except the routine and comparatively trivial, would be barred for four years. That is not a pleasing prospect. The homilies and hysterical harangues that Bryan would empty on congress for popular consumption would not satisfy a people yearning for a continuance of the federal policies of the past five years. His discourses and diatribes— Bryan can be a scold as well as a preacher would disturb trade and giVe , ’W a bad name, lessening our credit, among the nations. Our gold reserve would dwindle to the vanishing point, and Instead of maintaining the gold standard, by which we live and move and have our being, national and international, Bryan would surely quote the word "coin” In the statute and pay interest on the nation’s bonded indebtedness In the probable emergency in silver. That would be a disaster the land would not recover from In many years. It Is not impossible, eyen if no sign of it appears on the national horizon today. Prevention la a vlrtue. The evll can be prevented on election day. But there is more. Bryan really has become a high federalist He may and would deny that, naturally, but he halls the crescent power of the chief magistracy and would extend It and use it to such limit as he could. By the president’s direction near a billion dollars a year has now to be spent in the national government That needs a sagacious financier. Without an income tax no "tariff for revenue only" can be made that would be less than the import taxation necessary now. Last year’s and this year’s export trade is far above any known in our history before. Our national deficit of the past fiscal year is the result of decreases in our import and internal world is at ebb this year, governed by laws that are not political in the partisan sense. That income tax is a constant panacea of Bryan. During the coming four years four vacancies on the supreme oourt bench will have to be filled. Do the people think of that and, thinking, do they realize how Bryan, if president, would fill them? There are also legislatures to elect this fall that will have United States senators to name. Indiana is interested here. This state of ours has a special local issue this year and all others should be secondary to it in the minds of Indiana voters. If the Republican party be successful, as it should be, our representation in the United States senate will not be divided and James Alexander Hemenway will be one of the body to guard the nation against Bryan’s vagaries. That is, if Bryan be elected president He won’t be, but it Is not uninteresting,to think that he might and probably would do in the office, and that is why the thoughts here are presented*