Los Angeles daily herald., 1889-01-27
SUNDAY, JANUARY e7, 1859.
Mr. Cleveland an d the Democratic
Party.


Party.
In Yesterdays HERALD we published
q very clever communication from our
friend Major George S. Patton. one OF
the most promising young Democrats OF
Southern California-and withal man
for whose opinions we have always high
respect, whether they agree with our
own or not.
Mr.. Patton comments upon certain ex.
pressions of opinion which have ap-
peared in the HERALD anent our disas-
trous defeat in the late Presidential
elections defeat which we regard as
disastrous just in the degree in which it
was accomplished on q very slen-
der margin. To our judgment defeat
which rested on a few thousand votes
in certain pi votal States seems the more
to be lamented because very slight de-
velopment of common sense and tact
would have insured victory to the Demo-
cracy-the real party of the country.
Democrats are in no sense slaves. In
the Democratic party the old autocratic
idea of ruler has never had vogue or
received any form of acceptance. In the
Democratic usage above all things it is
held that one man is as good as another,
if not better. To our appreciation Mr..
Cleveland made a great mistake in
ignoring this standard Democratic idea,
and in circumscribing the list of his ad-
visers to MIR. Speaker Carlisle and Mr..
Henry Watterson. If he had broad
ened the circle of his advisers
in the Democratic party so. as to
include such men as Senator German,
of Maryland, and Senator, W. H.
Barnum, of Connecticut, he never would
have written his message of December a
year ago, at that time. He would have
made it his second inaugural message.
Mr.. Patton, in his open letter to the
people, which is what it really is,
assumes that the New York World was
an enemy of Mr.. Cleveland politically.
Not only is this not so, but the World was
the trenchant bouncer of the Sun, the
real insidious enemy of Mr.. Cleveland in
the ranks of the Democratic party. No
President ever had more enthusiastic
advocate than Mr.. Cleveland had in the
New York World up to the close of the
campaign, which resulted in his de-
feat, unless, at a great remove, and
with much humber pretensions, it was
the Los Angeles HERALD. At critical
stage of the late Presidential campaign
Mr.. Pulitzer. the proprietor and editor Of
the World, was in Los Angeles. To the
credit Of his personal acumen he thought,
when here, that the issue of the Presi-
dental election then impending was very
doubtful, and that il was made doubtful
by Mr.. Cleveland's ill-advised and pre-
cipitate message, which he knew would
be unjustly branded, but which would,
nevertheless, be branded as free trade
document.
OF course, ii politics is to be a mere
play of sentiment, success at the polls
amounts to nothing; but there are a
great many Democrats who think that the
control of a great country, large itself
and most potential in the affairs of man
kind, ought not to be surrendered by a
Democratic leader to its opponents on 3
mere caprice of willfulness. The country
ought to be run on the basis of popular
suffrage, and the majority ought to rule,
but no one knows better than Major
Patton that the majority does not rule.
The question then recurs whether, ac-
cepting our complex political system, it is
not wise to aim at securing electoral
votes which means success.
Before Mr.. Cleveland wrote his mes
sage of the 9th of December, 1887 he had
q walk-over for President. Everybody was
for him. The writer was in the East for
. month before the advent of that famous
document, and the remark that one could
hear on every car, in steam boats, in the
vestibules of hotels, in the Offices Of
bankers, was Cleveland is a good
enough President for me-" The change
was magical and decisive. The New
York World of the other day contained
an interview with Mr.. George W. Childs,
of the Philadelphia Ledger, in which that
gentleman said that he was Just upon
the point of coming out for Cleveland in
his powerful journal when he came across
that peculiar message-the right thing
delivered at the wrong time.
Mr.. Patton has something caustic to
say about Mr.. Samuel J. Randall, and
intimates that that gentleman has read
himself out of the Democratic party. We
do not see this. Mr.. Randall has been
the most valuable man the Democratic
party has possessed in the last quarter OF
q century. He was the man who defeat
ed the Force bill, which would have con-
verted the Southern States into satrapies,
apd would probably have changed the
whole scheme of American institutions.
He was the Chairman of the Committee
On Appropriations and Ways and Means
If the forty-fourth Congress, which made
,eductions of sixty millions Of dollars in
var yearly expenditures. He was elected to