The news & observer. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1894-current, 1903-05-22
wATTERsON ON CLEVELAND.

Time has indicated the foresight OF
Henry Watterson. Some months ago
when Mr.. Watterson lectured in Raleigh
he told the editor of this paper that Mr..
Cleveland did not consider himself out of
the running in 1904 Later, when he
stated in the Courier-JournaI that Mr..
Cleveland would be a candidate. the
Mugwump press ridiculed the Kentuckian
and said he was talking nonsense. that
Mr.. Cleveland could not be persuaded to
return to active political life. Today some
of those very papers are trying to put
enough wind into the Cleveland balloon
to make it rise.
In late issue of the Louisville Courier
Journal. headed, 'The Milk in the Co
coanut," Col Watterson reviews the
whole concerted movement and gives a
true picture of Cleveland. We quote it
in full:
Although we do not consider, and have
never considered fourth nomination of
Mr.. Cleveland by a United Democracy as
a thing possible. we can hardly believe
that Mr.. Joseph Pulitzer. of the New
York World, and Dr. st. Clair McKelway,
of the Brooklyn Eagle, old and able hands
at the bellows both, are consciously,
wantonly, making game of their readers
by the somewhat obstreperous campaign
they are waging towards that end So,
we have treated the suggestion seriously.
We shall continue SO to treat it until
Mr.. Cleveland himself, shfewd observer,
as well as a frugal husbandman of his own
interests, speaks the decisive word which
shall stop the chatter and take him in out
of the shower-the very downpour indeed
of newspaper speculation. Accepting all
that is going on as vindieation of the
foresight, verification of the much ridicul-
ed, much-maligned predictions of the
Courier Journal, we shall keep abreast of
it as If not very practical politics, yet
an interesting episode in current jour
nalism
I'm the East politics is largely business.
In New York especially the average poll
ticlan eliminates considera tions of senti-
ment, or, If he ventures to recognize and
discount them as to the outer world. he
fails TO estimate them at their true value.
He IS, as a rule, hopelessly ignorant of
the South and West. The members of the
Morgan Syndicate, who year ago resolv-
ed to defeat the nomination of Theodore
Roosevelt by the Republicans, duly an
nounced by the Courier-Journal, to be
savagely denied or vociferously ridiculed
and, failing of that, to defeat his election
haVe-a about made up their minds that the
oil IL
his familiars, is stronger than anybody
else. They have been misled partly by the
clamor Of the Mugwump contingent and
wholly by the st. Louis demonstration
They think that by coaxing here and
dickering there, and not only nursing the
enthusiasm to keep it warm, but by de
veloping it into a positive force and or
ganlzlng it into a certain channel and
fixed direction. they can circumyent and
capture even the old Democratic two
thirds rule. Then. with Mr.. Cleveland
nominated, they make sure to elect him.
They assume that he can carry New
York-They do not doubt that they car
buy New Jersey and Connecticut But
one additional electoral vote will then be
needed and they are not wide of the marx
in thinking that they can flip this from
some of the many rotten boroughs of the
Rocky Mountain range. AS for the Solo
South, it will have to take him, willy
nily. 1t cannot help itself.
I'm all this they reckon outside of sen
timent. sThey are quite oblivious to tn,
force of prejudice. They wholly under
rate the force of the third-term tradition
Even if Mr.. Bryan, and his following
should not put a counter-ticket in TIN
field-though they would.the detection
against Mr.. Cleveland even in the Eas
would be as great as they were agains
Mr.. Bryan in 1896. Mr.. Cleveland woul,
not carry New York. The Morgan Syn