The age-herald., 1902-03-08
Washington Day by Day

Washington, March l.-(SpeCldi1-1h h0 band-wagon that hears the anthem Of progress is again about to run over the south, which in the persons of some Of it's representatives stands in the high way of the higher material development. It is pitiful It would be Imaginable if 1t were not so.
 "IJndemocratic" Unconstitutional we have all the unreasonable plays upon the tiresome words of wisdom, self-wisdom and self qualification. It was begun in the time of the great one whom the unlearned still call MT" Jefferson and it has come down to this time of nobody in particular, so far as the Democratic party is con cerned. We are never, it seems, to get rid of the nightmare of our southern consti- tutionalism. She Is to ride us to the end of even unwisdom's long course The nightmare is old and decrepit, but she can still neigh and make the day hideous.
 A little while ago we southerners were red in the face with bowling against in- ternal development by the government. and now we are bowling for a two hum dred mlllion-dollar canal in a foreign land.
 Within this generation we screamed against the government improving It's l own property as represented In rivers and harbors. and now we scream because we cannot get from that same govern ment uncounted and unestimat ed millions for one river in Alabama which for hum dreds of miles has never been ordinarily navigable.
 In those days we were violent in pro- test against every dollar the government wished to expend in our development In these days we of Alabama are violent be- cause we can't get at least a third of all the money the government Is in position to expend In the improvement of It's own property-the rivers and harbors.
 All the nation now demands the con struction of that two hundred million-dol- lar canal in a foreign land which we of the south declare is absolutely necessary to southern development; and at the same time southern representatives in the Sen ate and the House are shrieking against | a proposed law creating a merchant ma rine which would make that same canal most profitable and make our America mistress of the seas!
 The Warrior the Tennessee, the Coosa, the Cumberland and numerous other rivers of the south must have the gov ernment's millions poured into their channels: but Southerners fight to the death against a proposition which seeks to make those rivers and all the Southern h u,tf, I'm of nations which we call by name com merce!
 In every community there are ignorant upstarts who howl against things as ''un- democratic" "unconstitutional" and the like, who yet have never read a hundred lines of Jefferson nor fifty lines of Mar shall, the one the creator of the Demo- cratic party and the other more than creator of the constitution. These little ones with big mouths couldn't repeat to you the substance of one paragraph of the Declaration of Independence nor the first ten words of the constitution.
 Still these bowling little ones of no in- formation do no real hurt. They blow ana bluster and threaten the tenure of office of wise men who are progressive; but they do not each always count even as one vote. They may talk one way and, upon a substantial wink, vote another. or vote not at all. Let them proceed with their bowling
 Meanwhile there Is real trouble in the condition that many of the ablest and best men we have are riding the night mare. They talk about constitutionaiism and anti-democracy and all that kind of argument, and they talk to an army of listeners. Being amongst our ablest and best men they deserve and receive thoughtful consideration. Although these leaders talk the talk of seventy and fifty years ago. they are always listened to and often accepted as guides against latter-day everyday common sense.
 These good and strong leaders are con- sistent In nothing save to a constitu- tionalsm and democracy that are past They are for every possible dollar of public money for rivers and harbors, public buildings and "nationar' parks for rustic communities they even shout for soldiers camps and federal jails- most demoralizing of influences-and they stand on tiptoe and strain every muscle for the two hundred million-dollar canal in foreign land.
 But when 1t comes to maintaining our flag on the high seas-to carrying Ameri- can commerce in American ships-and to adding immeasurably to the volume of Americas material greatness by forth with doubling, trebling, quadrupling the foreign commerce of the country and making our nation first in the ipcon- parable prestige of the seas then these leaders are as shy of progress as a mai den is in her bath of innocence: then they have fits of buck ague over a pro- posed appropriation for shipping scarcely equal in the first year to the sum that will be shortly voted for the betterment of the Warrior River. and which in five years cannot amount to as much as has been expended in a channel for Mobile harbor or the betterment of two shoalv reaches of the Tennessee River, whereon wild geese have been wont to flock in hurtless freedom
 Yet it does not matter. Our southern leaders of democracy who are being run over by the band wagon will have obeyed their sense of duty, expediency. political policy what not, and the ship subsidy bill, so-called. will be the great far reaching and vastly beneficial law of a nation that now encomnassee iaiapd oor