Arizona republican., 1904-07-10
PHOENIX. ARIZONA, JULY 10, 1904
rhe pemocratlc Predlcament.

The democratic party aIter three days of intense and heart breaking la bor has provided itself with leader who declines to stand upon a platform with yawning hole in it. All this comes of one of the rarest causes oi disaster-not talking enough. If Judge Parker had intiHated to his friends what he desired 1t would no doubt have been given him but he permitted the leaders of the party to get together with out plans and specifications. It was understood that the platform was to be quite different from the two Bryan platforms and anything different from them was supposed to be good enough for Mir Parker.
 His views on financial matters were fairly we'll understood and the conven- tion had reason to believe that they could be satisfactorily met by silence. But Judge Parker who has been a sphinx during the ante-convention campaign withhelds his admiration of silence in the platform.
 A neW nominee may have to be chos- esa or the platform may have to be patched. h either ease a new thing ,sim have happeaed in the politics of the country and it win not be thing which will better equip the party for the eanapaign.
 The democratic party was supposed to be ready EeF the fray. It was thought Co have awakened from its ugly and dlsordered dream and to have become safe and sane" It cannot be claimed that 1t will derive great strength from the personality of Judge Parker, should he ultimately accept the nomination, for though no doubt an estimable man and well known in his own state of New York he must yet be introduced to the masses of the rest of the country. The enemies of Judge Parker within his own party had been vainly trying to ascertain his views on a variety of subjects. Even some Of nis friends had been vainly trying to do the same thing in order, presuma- bly that they might build a platform to conform 10 them. But they were told to give themselves no uneasinessj that Judge Parker was not finical on the subject of platforms; that almost any old kind of a platform would suit him.
 Therefore the interest of the demo- cratic campaign does not lie in the can didate but in the platform which ap- pears to be a cross between the Al bany platform and the Nebraska platform, resembling rather more the progenitor on the Albany side.
 There is an entire absence of the financial question which is certainly gratifying to republicans. There was. we believe, an effort to incorporate into it a declaration in favor of the gold standard and we are informed that the committee refrained from do- ing so pureiy out of respect to the dead.
 But the silence of the democratic platform on the financial subject, of which Judge Parker complains must be taken to bs consent to the prevailing order eff things, a passive endorsement of the gold standard with which the republican party endowed the country eight years ago.
 Q There is also an absence of any ref erence to She income tax which has lately been a prominent and indispen- sable feature of democratic national platforms. There is not the denuncia- ton or government by injunction which the country might have expect ed Of the gathering at St. Louis.
 The treatment of the trusts was not especially cruel. The proposal to put them into an anaemic condition by the withdrawal of the protecting tariff is about the only essential departure from the proposed republican method of dealing with them.
 Judge Parker it was expected would put his own construction upon the plat form and that he would build entire his own financial plank, of material which he might find lying about Esopus That he was empowered to do and from what little has been gathered of the judges predilections expressed in his telegram to Chairman Sheehan, we may believe that it would have been fashioned faithfully after the republi- can model
 It must be admitted at any rate that the democratic party is approaching to safety and sanity.