Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1886-09-25
REPUBLIcANIsM AND RAILROADS.

The dispatches say that Mr.. Tarpey, a
candidate for a State Office on the Demo-
cratic ticket, declared in a speech at Pla-
c%erville Thursday night that if there were
| no railroads in California there would be
no Republican party here. Mr.. Tarpey
spoke wiser than he knew. In the effort
to be witty, and the attempt to stigmatize
the Republican party as truculent, he
stumbled upon the pith of a great truth,
and paid Republicanism the Hottest of
tributes. The history of our country, and
the westward march of progress, proves
nothing if it does not establish that the
advance of the railroad and the telegraph
has been coequai with the spread of intel
l~igence, the forward movement of c%iviliza-
ton, and the advance of every elevating
and refining influence. PROFESSIONALLY
the Republican party belongs to the rail-
road era; unquestionably it is har-
messed to the car of progress
abreast with the locomotive unques-
| tionably its advance has been into
the Stygian darkness Of error, prejudice,
oppression, human bondage and ignorance,
| driving back these evil agencies with the
flaming sword of light, of intelligence, of
freedom, of free schools, of free thought
and of political independence. With no
railroads in California it is possible that
| this fair State would have been given over
to the Democracy, which most fourishes
where least light is, and the smallest de-
gree of progress is manifest. Just in pro-
portion as the blaze of enlightenment
| penetrated the Far West the Dem
ocratic party either moved out
or reformed its methods and its doc
trines. From having been the advocate
of human slavery it has been driven by
Republicanism and railroads, the pro-
g~ressive development of the race and the
right, to yield its ground and confess that
its one-time advocacy was in behalf of the
mightiest of human wrongs. Republican,
ism came into California TO make it a
State worthy of its lofty possibilities
Railroads came afterward as naturally as
the flow of water to the inviting sea. Be.
fore these two mighty agencies Democratic
bigotry and dogmatism fled. The Democ-
racy of to-day in California, bad and re-
Progressive as it is, is no more the Democ.
racy of 1S56-60 than is the present the
hour of the past. The simple voice Of
RepublicauiSm for "the Union, one and
inseparable," choked the one-time cry the
Union as it was" in the throat of a dis
loyal Democracy, and the locomotiyethun
dered shortly after over the Sierras to an.
nounce the bond complete that linked
California to the Union, and crushed the
last hope traitorous Democrats entertained
of carrying the Golden State over to the
Confederacy. Indeed, the Republican
party is responsible for the Pacific rail
roads-all honor to it and to them. II is
responsible for the construction Of these
greatest works of the age, and that have
done more for the nation and the individ.
ual han any industrial achievement
within the quarter century. 1t is one o.
the proudest records of its brilliant career
that it gave life to the thought and
brought to consummation the building
of the transcontinental railways, and Out
of which grew the railway system of Cali
fornia, without which she would to-day bt
trailing twenty years behind the age, anc
possibly be hopelessly welded to the non
progressiveness of the Democratic party
of which Mr.. Tarpey is such a shinine
light.