Birmingham state herald. (Birmingham, Ala.) 1895-1897, 1896-07-10

fetal trapeze at the executive mansion
| while Horace Boies is its occupant; he
| VIII write you no startling messages
| upon excitable public topics. We promise
| you none of these performances, but /
tell you what we can and do promise
| you, and that is the inauguration and
faithful execution of a policy that will
commend itself to every philosophic mind
| and be applauded by every sincere pa
triot; policy that will be chaa cterized
throughout by the invigorating force
OF hard, common sense, and be all agioW
| with the everlasting sunshine of noble
intentions-a policy the primary object
| or which will be not the creation of OPP
! portunities for the unnatural increase
OF the already excessive fortunes of an
| avaricious class, but the strict main
| tenance of the natural and constitutional
rights of every citizen carefully, includ-
| ing that great body of our population,
the laboring classes, the people who pro-
| duce our national wealth. who never
| tire of their devotion TO the constitution,
who never desert their country's cause
| at any stage of any peril, who are al
ways true and steadfast even in the very
| midst of an overwhelming crisis, who
| furnish the volunteer soldier and sailor
in time of war and earn the wherewith
| to pay the cost of the war when DIT is
| over; the people who are the very main
| stay of free government. To secure to
| these a larger share of the fruits of
| their labor, to secure to them impartial
| justice, will be one of the cardinal prin-
ciples fully developed in the policy of the
Boies administration.
The Right Type of Statesman.
To secure to him who earns a dollar
the dollar he earns is a task that will
be vigorously exacted of the statesman
ship of the future. That type of states
manship which so persstently and
successfully plotted to pilfer from the
Industrious that the idle may thrive will
be given it's death blow next November
If you men are wise in your councils and
provide the opportunity for the people to
strike the blow.
Horace Boies was born In New York
state and came to Iowa in his early man
hood. He came not as an adVenturer,
but with the fixed purpose of building
up permanent home, which he did at
the town of Waterloo. While he thus
voluntarily and resolutely incurred all
the Inconvenience Of practically
frontier life, the result Is that In his ma
turer years the people of his state have
loaded him down with the richest honors
and rewards 1t is in their power to be-
stow, and he is today an-inseparable
and the most conspicuous part OF the
phenomenal history of our state. Let
me beg of this convention the privilege
of giving you just one glimpse OF Iowa
history AS to the question of Iowa being
a great state, concerning the capacity of
her soil to produce uniformly ABUNDANT
crops, l. Will not uedl. II Is tHouSh "
say that the diploma awarded to Iowa
by the management of the Columbian
exposition is the official declaration
which secures to us what had been De-
fore conceded by all, viz: the crown
ing glory of standing ~ the head or the
long column of the agricultural states
of this nation. Neither drouth nor flood
have ever been powerful enough IN Iowa
to constitute what in other localities is
a natural calamity. have raised fifty
bushels of solid eorn-per acre, upon
which not one drop Of rain fell from the
time it came up until the ear was fully
grown. There is, perhaps, not another
spot in this wide world where such
thing is possible.
The Voice of One in the Wilderness.
But while we are easily supreme in the
corn field, Iowa democrats have had a
hard row to hoe in politics. The torments
inflicted by the seven plaques of Egypt
must have been solid chunk of COM
fort compared to the treatment accorded
Iowa democrats by the sixty, seventy
and eighty thousand uninterrupted re-
publican majority which for more than
a generation delighted In making an an
nual picnic out of the election day, and
just for the fun of the thing trample the
Iowa democracy bodily into the very
earth. This huge army of republican
voters was dominated by the spirit OF an
inexplicable fanaticism, and the more we
combatted this spirit the fiercer 1t grew.
Naturally democrats became disheart-
ened and scarce When this republican
recklessness was nearing the culminat-
ing point, when through sumptuary leg
islation every fundamental guarantee OF
personal liberty was endangered, when
acts which throughout the civilized
world are regarded as natural and treat
ed as lawful were in our state defined as
crimes and compared to a capital Of
Tense; when the constitutional protection
of trial by jury, which for centuries has
been esteemed as the very climax of all
the glory of our Anglo-Saxon civilization,
when this was about to be elimited from
our judicial system and the methods of
barbarouS Russia were to be substituted;
in fact when the whole machinery OF To-
cal self-government, the greatest of all
democratic principles, the principle of
home rule, was about to be swept out of
exist ence; when every lover of freedom
was on the point of despairing, when there
was no democratic leader anywhere In
sight wise and bold enough to face the
crisis, there was heard the voice of one as
speaking in the wilderness. 1t was the
magic of Horace Boies summoning dis
heartened men to heroic action. He 1t
was who leaped boldly to the very front
and alone defied the seemingly irresisti-
BILE power of an exultant foe, foe that
had never been chastened by defeat. He
accomplished what all men united in de-
claring the impossible, for In the two con-
tests which followed, which in many re-
spects have no parallel in the history of
American politics, Horace Boies came off
victor, and thus did he forever avert the
danger of having veritable despotism
planted upon the fruitful soil of a. free
state. A soldier can only show his cour-
age in battle; sailor his fearlessness
only while a storm is raging; the fireman
in your great city can only exhibit that
sublime type of heroism which we all so
much admire during the time of an ac-
tual conf1agration, when property Is to be
saved and imperilled lives are to be res
cued, so a statesman can only show his
real capacity, can only demonstrate the
full measure of his wisdom and power
during a crisis. 1t is only during an ac-
tual crisis that the higher qualities of
craftsmanship can be developed and test
ed That Horace Boies possesses this
rarest of all human capacities, the power
to rise equal and superior to crisis and
control it, is attested by this history of
our state and concurrent testimony of po-
litical friend and foe. This is the man
who stands before the American people,
equipped with these supreme qualifica-