Ottumwa tri-weekly courier. [volume] (Ottumwa, Iowa) 1903-1916, 1904-07-21
Mr.. MAXWELL BOLTS.

ner ne carried through the anti-conven-
uon campaign and equally unable to
LOOK pleasant after the Hearst crowd
nao been so badly pummelled in ST
LOUIS A: W.. Maxwell has bolted the
party, thrown up his Job as chairman
OF the state committee and even as a
MEMBER OF that body, repudiated the
JACKET, the platform, and the whole af-
fair. Mr.. Maxwell has burned every
bridge behind him and he can neither
attend the democratic convention as a
democrat today nor, say the members
OF the committee, send a man to sit
in the committee with his (Maxwell's)
proxy. He is no longer a democrat ac
cord1ng to the St. Louis convention.
and it is hard to exactly place him.
Mr. Maxwell surely will not want
70 join the republican party after all
the hard things he has said and
thought about it. He has turned down
the democratic party and has said that
If Parker is elected the whole country
will go to the bow vows He is still.
1t is reasonable to suppose, Hearst
man and in that classification he must
remain
Mr. Maxwell says he has tried to per-
suade himself to believe that the demo.
cratic platform adopted at ST. Louis
is all right, and therefore delayed his
resignation until just before the state
convention. When he found that he
could not hypnotic himself sufficient
ly to. see good point in the platform
he made public his bolt. OF course the
fact that the conservatives would rule
the Iowa City convention and GUST him
as chairman of the state com mittee
could have had nothing to do with the
case.
Now that it is clear to the Seymour
man that the election of Parker and
Davis cannot possibly do the country
a bit of good he says he will not lend
his aid to their cause. Now that it is
all over 1t is found that Mr. Maxwell
has been fighting for the past eight
years the very interests into whose
hands he says the democratic party has
been delivered; namely, the trusts.
Mr.. Maxwell was the leader of the
Hearst forces in the Iowa democracy
and when he clashed with the conserya,
tives in Des Moines at the time of the
May convention of the democrats it
was not hard to see that it would be
almost impossible to bring both wings
of the party together into one united
whole, no matter who might be the
nominee in st. Louis. The Hearst
sympathizers were especially enthusi.
astic for their candidate and this char
acteristic marked the supporters of
the newspaper man throughout the
country. To their minds Hearst was
the only man who could be elected on
the democratic ticket this year and evil
IDENTIFY Mr.. Maxwell still believes so.
That there are many other democrats
who believe with him goes without
saying. Perhaps all will not make so
much noise when they bolt as does Mr..
Maxwell, because they are not in the
limelight as he Is, but there are men
all over the country who followed Bry-
an through his two disastrous cam
paigns and would follow him through
another, who will not give Parker and
Davis either support or sanction.
The bolt of Mr. Maxwell performs a
double mission. 1t makes it clear that
the conservatives, the element which
was turned down at every point in the
convention in Des Moines on May 4,
will be in complete control in Iowa de-
mocracy now. 1t also assures compar-
alive quiet in the convention today but
It shows that instead of being united
the dem ocratic party in Iowa is today
more widely split than it has been for
many years. This is republican
year, of that there can be no doubt, and
the democrats evidently propose to
"cinch" that fact by adding to the re-
publican majority many of their own
votes.
Mr.. Maxwell is out-spoken in his dis
like for the platform his party has
made. In his letter of resignation, re-
pudiation, ETC.. he says:
"Thus far have discovered abso-
lutely nothing to commend it to the
voters of the country It's surren-