The Anaconda standard. [volume] (Anaconda, Mont.) 1889-1970, 1898-08-23
The Plight They're In.

~REE coinage is as lively n topic
as ever I'm the politics of New
i York. The issue is not dead: in
anticipation of this years state n
vention. its platform and its candidates,
the democratic journals in the Empire
state have a great deal to say about it.
Among these. the most persistent talk
ers are the newspapers in New York
which insist that they are democratic
but whose files for 1896 are in proof
that they did not support the demo-
cratic presidential ticket at the last
national election.
These newspapers no longer denounce
the Bryan ticket n its supporters as
not democratic. They dare not do
that-they dare not fly in the face of
the states election eturns. Silver was
i~mmeasurably stronger i'm New York
than these so-called gold democrats
that title is a misnomer-supposed it
was going to be; Bryan polled close to
forty per cent of the vote of the state
of New York-his total was more than
$50, 900 votes in the state: and that. in
spite of the desperate efforts of Hill
and Whitney and Flower and the rest
Of the old democratic bosses in New
York to break him down. In view of
the ugly opposition of these men. who
had in their hands the whole of the
democratic machinery in New York,
the Bryan returns there were a splen-
did showing.
So that so-called democratic news
papers in the Empire state that were
for gold, and are for it. are not in form
to say that they speak for New York
democracy. Some of them professed to
be for Palmer. because they still
claimed to be democrats" but the cleo
ton returns prove that this was a hol-
low pretense. They really represent a
constituency that went clear over to
Mckinley: in the great state of New
York the Palmer ticket polled less than
$4,000 votes-less by considerable thar
two per cent of the states vote.
These gold organs realize that this is
not their year to dictate; they are try
ing to see what persuasion will do.
Modern ~ewspape talk furnishes no
match for their fabby utterances.
This, for instance, from the Brooklyn
Eagle:
The Eagle and other friends of the gold
standard in the democratic party will
willingly concede that the candidate for
governor and the candidates for other
state offices should he taken from the
rank and file of the party. That involves
the selection of men for state Offices who
acted with the bulk of the party in 1896.
Some of them supported Mr.. Bryan and
his platform because they believed in
both. Others supported Mr.. Bryan and
his platform because they believed that
the maintenance of party organization in
volved a lenient disregard of party errors
and that IT was better TO stay by the
party in order to make II eventually go
right than to break with IL because it had
just once gone wrong.
How thin this stuff is, The Eagle
follows II with the ridiculous remark
that "alI democrats can vote this year
for a state ticket of moderate. not
fragrant, adherents to the party as an
organization in 1896" If they only
have the courage to pull true this year,
how tired New York's five hundred and
~ffty-odd thousand democrats who
pulled true in 1896 can make these
pseudo-democratic advocates of the re-
publican gold-standard outrage!