Eagle River review. [volume] (Eagle River, Wis.) 1890-1927, 1900-03-15
CAMPAIGN OF 1900.
DEMOCRATS ARE Up AGAINST
HARD POLITICAL KNOTS.
Party Zealots This Year Can't Arouse
the People with the Bugaboo of
Threatened Financial Ruin = Conf
dence in Republican Party.

So far as debate is concerned in the
political campaign Of this year the
money question does not promise to be
conspicuous. Nr. Bryan will not say
that the silver issue is to be dropped;
none of the silver leaders will say that.
The platform as repaired at Kansas
City will include the financial plank of
1896 without material change. The
platform will declarc. for free silver,
the presidential candidate will stand
for free silver, but 1.-THE paramount is
sue'' Of four years ago will be little in
mems thoughts or speech in the cam
paign of 1900. The fact that gold
standard statute has been passed by
Congress in the meanwhile will not
provoke appeal to the people to arouse
themselves to the work Of saving their
homes and firesides from overwhelm-
ing financial ruin. The campaign zeal
OTIS of the Democratic party will let it
all pass. Here and there an individ-
ual, unable to turn himself in four
years, will look to free silver and is to
L.
The Populists, out on the prairie some
where, may say to themselves that it is
the second battle, and if doubt leaks in
upon them they will cite the platform
and point to Mr.. Bryan. 1t is not pro-
posed that the Populists, of either par
ty label, shall receive more shock than
the emergency requires. But the cam
dc
Such. a political transition in four
years is remarkable thing to contem-
plate. But the Democratic directors
will account for it. They will say that
the Republican party has forced upon
the country new questions that are of
more urgent character. Yet if what
they said in 1896 had truth back Of it
nothing could be more urgent than the
salvation of our own people from the
bondage of the gold standard. But
some way or other that peril cannot be
vitalized into a campaign issue of
promise. The lurid character of the
pictures of four years ago has faded
out. The leaders know it, and the fact
will be of quite common knowledge by
the time the votes are in next fall. The
Republican party has no reason to
shrink from the responsibility of hay-
ing wrought this transformation. If
credit shall be assumed, however, cred
it will be denied. 1t will be said that
tension has been taken off of the mon
ey issue by changed conditions that
have come in spite of the gold standard
and in spite of all the Republican party
has done. But these changed condi-
tons have come. This is the import
ant fact. The fundamental proposition
upon which the Democratic party
placed itself four years ago was that
q change for the better was impossible
without opening the minis to the free
and unlimited coinage of silver The
important fact is that the Democratic
party was wrong. 1t may be that the
discovery of new deposits Of gold, con-
ditions of war, and all that, afford such
explanation as is needed. It must he
admitted, however, that the Republi-
can party was not wrong when it said
that the evils complained of would dis
appear with revival of the industries
of the people, and that such revival
was not dependent upon the debase-
ment of the money of the country But
never mind that. The Democratic party
was wrong. The acknowledgment of
that wrong is to be made this year by
the substitution Of silence for frenzy.
But the Democratic party will not be
silent. 1t will not be as noisy as it was
in 1896, but it will be as noisy as it can
be. The country was going to the bad
in 1896 in one direction, and it will be
as positively asserted this year that it
is going to the bad in another direction.
The trouble this year will not be new
trouble. 1t will simply be revival Of
a very old trouble. At the very begin
ming of the life of the Republ can par
ty it was charged that the success of
the Republican party would nyean the
destruction of the Constitution. Now
we are to have that old, old song again.
OF course the Democratic party is not
now standing for slavery; it is not
standing for the extension of slavery
under the Constitution to the Terri
tories. Nevertheless it can see clearly
that if the Republican party is longer
trusted all the guarantees of the Con-
stitution are to be broken down. The
Democratic party now trembles for lib
erty. Singularly enough, however, the
Democratic, party will go back to the
days of John G. Calhoun for it's argu-
mentS.
The civil war demonstrated that the
Constitution could not be set up as. a
bar to enlightened progress nor used
as shackle to the moral expansion of
the people. The Democratic party will
now find that the Constitution cannot
be used to tie the hands of this great
nation in the discharge of its response
bilities under the treaty with Spain,
nor to dwarf its powers in the contest
for supremacy among the enlightened
nations Of the earth. The Constitution
is no more than an expression of the