The Republican journal., 1901-05-02
A sprained Ankle Quickly Cured.
Organism and Jefersonian Democracy.

In reality, he who runs may read
more of the spirit of Jeffersonian
Democracy in the Chicago and Kansas
City platforms than can be found in
any other platform of the Democratic
party. Furthermore, in his political
beginnings, when he knew or had read
little else, MI. Bryan crammed himself
with lessons from Jefferson's life and
was an ostentatious disciple of that
eminent radical. Indeed, it is precisely
this quality of Jetfersonism in MI.
Bryan and his platforms which is often
sive to the conservative or old school
Democracy. 1t is left to Organism to
illustrate the fact, which the Bourbon
Democracy does not even yet compre-
bend, that Jeffersonian Democracy is
quite out of joint with the times. If
Jefferson should come back now to the
country whose political institutions
and polity he so largely shaped and in
spired, he would meet the same sort of
a reception, as, i'll Mr.. Stead'S opinion,
would be given in Chicago to his great
forerunner as a social leveller.
Both Jefferson and Jackson lived in
very primitive social conditions COM
pared to those in which Mr. Bryan is
undertaking to apply their political and
social notions. They could, with conf
dence, appeal to the plain people"
then, because there We're few of any
other class to oppose or control them.
They did not take into account the
coming supremacy of organized capitol,
much more potent in its control of the
dependent plain people, than Mr..
Bryan's idealiStic notions of individual
liberty, because they had not dreamed
of the revolutionary advent of steam
and electricity, or the teeming popula-
ton which has been their concomitant
Fisher Ames had said, i'll 1871: cages
must elapse before the vast wilderness
west of the Alleghanies can be peopled,
and then God only knows how they can
be governed" And Jefferson in his
first inaugural address, contemplating
only the northwestern territory as far
as the Mississippi, said: ''there is room
enough. for our descendants to the hun
dredth and thousandth generation"
The same sudden creation of modern
means of transportation and other me-
chanical appliances, which so utterly
COMPOUNDED the prophecy of Ames, has
thrown out upon the banks of progress
the let-alone individualistc policy of
Jefferson and Jackson where it lies
obsolete and stale.
Jefferson and Jackson established a
system of political equality, and then
dreamed that this comprehended econo-
mic equality, or, at least, economic
freedom. But SO great has been the
economic and social change since these
great political builders wrought that
we are, in the words of lola, Sin a
democracy ravaged by political equality
and economic Inequality" The great
French radical could not have described
more truly or APPLY our present condi-
ton, if he had had his eye upon us in
stead of France, or perhaps European
society in general, when he spoke these
words. Though this condition is the
basis of Organism and of party cleav-
age, yet it is so unconsciously; or, at
the most, is vaguely perceived. We
are in state of economic anarchy. We
pretend to be living in Jeffersonian
equality though we have not adjusted
our methods and institutions to chang
ing conditions for hundred years.-Al-
bert Watkins in the May Forum.