Washington standard. [volume] (Olympia, Wash. Territory) 1860-1921, 1897-02-05
JACKSON AND BOLTOCRATS.


One of the severest sarcasms and
most scathing denunciations of the
700 gold standardites, who recently
met in Chicago on Jackson day and
resolved that they are the only true
Democrats, is found in a recent issue
OF the Kansas City Times, which
editorially speaks of the affair as fol-
lows:
"They called it banquet, that
Jackson day gathering at Chicago,
whereat 200 boltocrats met to eat,
drink and be sorry. But it was more
like funeral.
"What right had the representatives
OF that crowd-which not only plotted
and perpetrated treachery against the
Democratic party, but arrayed the
polluted carcass of treason in the
pinchbeck jewelry of hypocrisy and
called the repulsive thing patriotism
Ito drag an honored name, a glorious
day, into their profaning orgies? What
incident is there in the history of the
grand old hero of New Orleans, the
fearless chief magistrate who stood be-
tween the plain people and the en-
croachment of corporate wealth, that
could be tortured into the slightest ap-
proval of the remuneration of party
fealty or the reputation of party
doctrines? Republican Hessians,
glorifying the day on which the battle
of New Orleans was fought and ex-
trolling the hero who captained the
brave men whose valor won it, presents
a spectacle of effrontery that only the
shriveled band of shameless political
freebooters who drank and talked at
Chicago on Jackson day could have
evolved.
Fhe champion OF the rights OF the
people against the expressions of the
banking power, lauded and claimed
as a political prototype by such
creatures as the millionaire grocer,
Franklin McVeigh, who presided over
the feast, and by the partyless Presi-
dent, who sent the feasters his ponder
ous commendatiOn in epistolary form,
were he in the flesh and constrained by
some inconceivable power to attend
this feast of PROCLAMATION would feel as
utterly out of place as an eagle among
a flock of masquerading magpies.
Cleveland alluding in terms of po-
litical fellowship to Andrew Jackson
and the "old landmarks of the Demo-
cratic party" is travesty and a sacri-
lege. The destroyer of Democracy
yoking himself in encyclopaedia phrase
with its most fearless exponent and
defender is enough to make the gorge
rise in the throat of every honest
Democrat throughout the length and
breadth of the Union. Jackson, the
conquerOr of the British, coupled with
the fat Drained egotist who looks to
foreign nation for his financial policy;
Cleveland, grown rich in office and
bending all the resources which the
people have placed in his hands to
force these same people beneath the
tyranny of the organized moneyed
power, mating his beliefs and policies
with the poor and rugged personality
OF Old Hickory, who took by the
throat the United States bank and
stilled its demands with the sword of
the constitution Jackson the soldier
who barred his breast to his country's
foes on many battlefield and shed
his blood in his country's cause, with
out tremor Of regret; Jackson, who
stands for the highest expression of
bravery, manliness, patriotism and
craftsmanship in the American repub-
lie, harnessed in terms of party con-
sanguinity with the dropsical ex-sheriff
of Erie county New York, who fought
his battles when his country called for
men with a hired substitute and
whose war-like experiences are con-
fined to desperate onslaughts upon
the ducks of the Potomac and Carolina
swamps and to angling depredations
upon the fish of Buzzard's Bay.
These are some of the grotesque and
unseemly manifestations of violence
done to the yerities of history and the
honored traditions of the Democratic
party by the little band of boltocrats
who gave their lonely and lugubrious
banquet in commemoration of Andrew
Jackson at Chicago.
An insignificant group, representing
crowd which at the recent election
polled less than one per cent of the
popular vote, criticising, defaming
and denouncing as wholly bad and
immoral the organization that cast
over SIX million votes for the Demo-
cratic candidate, is an exposition of col
Ossal cheek which deties the centuries
that have come and gone since the
dawn of history for its parallel or its
peer.