The Telegraph-courier. [volume] (Kenosha, Wis.) 1888-1946, 1900-07-05
The Man is the Platform.


the great issues of the day leave wide
latitude for legislative or administra-
tive Interpretation, but by the char
acter of the men it delights to honor
and whom it entrusts with the powers
of government and the possibilities
of leadership. Take the Democratic
party of today and let it frame what
declarations it may at its coming ma
tiona1 convention. 1t might rem ig-
more free si1ver-which it w I not
and might so modify its att uoe on
expansion and other questions as tc be
far less Objectionable than it is certain
to be. But when it shall nominate
w. j. Bryan for its standard bearer
the nation will at once accept not the
platform, but the man as indexing the
principles and purposes of the Demo
cratic party. That party is welded to
Bryan, because with his preposterous
economic theories and his shallow So
cia1istic pessimism he stands for the
negation of all the maxims and ideals
of just and honest and orderly govern
ment; because he represents all those
reactionary forces of destruction, con-
fusion and disorder with which the
Democratic party has become allied in
the later phases of its degeneracy.
But, on the other hand, the Repub-
1ican party, with such men as William
McKin1y and Theodore Roosevelt as it's
candidates and leaders, needs no other
platform than their characters, as
each has made for himself in his sepa-
rate sphere of action and duty. They
stand for the best and nob1est ideals of
patriotic American citizenship and for
the highest conceptions of civic duty
and of American craftsmanship: for
the policies that have rescued the
panic-stricken and paralyzed indus
tries and commerce of the country
from the dark abysses of ruin and ma
tiona1 shame and dishonor into which
Organism threatened to plunge them,
and lifted them to higher levels of
prosperity than were ever before at
tanned; for the policies that have
placed the currency of the country and
all commercial and public obligations,
and with them all the vast volume of
public and private business, on the Sc
cure foundations of the money standard
| 90 n fOI.
the policies which have made the
three years of McKin1ey's admins
tration an epoch of such marvellous
| DEVELOPMENT of American industries
and of the expansion of American
commerce as was never approached in
all the previous history of the country;
for the policies which, in vindicating
the invio1abi1ity of the public faith,
have raised our national credit to
higher point than that of any nation
on earth; for the policies under which
not only have the American people
prospered in their domestic affairs as
never before, but the nation has ad-
vanCed to a far more influential posi-
ton among the great powers of the
earth than ever before which have
made it's flag respected and its name
honored in every country; for the poll
cies which recognized it as a supreme
duty of this republic to free the OPP
pressed people of the Spanish islands
from the cruel tyranny of Spain and
as an equally supreme obligation to
carry the blessings of liberty and good
government, of enlightenment and
progress, to the people for whose we'll
being we have become responsible.
And because these two men were rec
ognized as the best representatives of
this American craftsmanship in its
broadest, most progressive and most
benefcent sense, they were chosen as
the standard bearers of the Republican
party in the pending presidential cam
| paign-the one to be continued in the
chief magistracy, whose high duties
and sponsibi1ities he has so we'll dis
charged, and the other as his 1ieuten-
ant and possible successor. The Re
publican party never achieved higher
honors for itself, never furnished the
American people with more striking
proof of the nob1eness of it's purposes
and the breadth and purity of it's pat
riotism, than in the spontaneous and
enthusiastic unanimity with which it
chose these two men as it's leaders, and
the repositories of the great trusts
Pioneer-Press.