The Penn's Grove record., 1904-12-16
The South In Politics.
IN. Y. Tribune)

kN. 4. 1FlDuueJ
Southern newspapers and politicians
continue to discuss with frank concern
their sections isolated role in national
politics. The breakdown of the ire
organized Democracy has left the
South without either an ineligible poll
tical programme or national political
attachments. Having repudiated
Organism at the instigation of the
"safe and sane" rainbow chasers who
managed Judge Parker's canvass, the
Southern leaders find now that they
were duped into an alliance politically
far less profitable than the coalition
they had maintained, in the eight years
preceding, with Northern and Western
radicalism. Overwhelmed by the fail
ure of the humbug campaign conducted
in Judge Parker's interest, Southern
Democrats now proclaim themselves
disguised with ''safe and sane'' Demo
cracy.
But what is the South to do and
where is it to look for new political al
llances? In some quarters it has been
suggested that the Southern States cut
loose entirely from both wings of the
Northern Democracy and act hereafter,
both in Congress and in the Electoral
College, as an independent sectional
unit, much as the Irish contingent in
Parliament acts at Westminster. An
indignant Georgian urged only the 9TH
er day that, to emphasize the South's
reputation of the disrupted Northern
Democracy, the Southern electors
should unite with those chosen by 'the
Solid North" and give a unanimous
vote for Roosevelt and Fairbanks. Such
extreme counsel will, of course, be dis
regarded, and the South will give it's
electoral ballots-though perhaps per-
functorily and grudgingly-to Parker
and Davis. But the feeling now find
ing vehement expression in the South
ern newspapers will doubtless lead to a
material readjustment of the South's
attitude toward national policies and
national issues. That section must
either draw still further apart from the
normal political life of the nation or it
must break it's solidarity and allow it's
voting population to divide along the
natural lines of, radicalism and conser-
vatism.
After the fasco of 1904 the Northern
Democracy seems certain to turn for
rehabilitation to radical leadership and
radical issues. The conservative
Democracy preached by Mr.. Cleveland
and his imitators is a hopeless paradox.
The Democratic party is in its tradi-
lions and essence a radical party, and
its only future lies in a frank acknowl-
edgment of radical purposes. MI Bry-
an, not Mr.. Cleveland or Mr.. Parker,
is now the party's natural leader. 1t
has no place within it's ranks for sham
or genuine conservatives, who want to
use its name but have no sympathy with
its historic aims and purposes. But, if
the Northern Democracy thus becomes
radical, the South cannot reattach it.
self as a unit to that party's fortunes.
The divisions in sentiment which exist
at the North will show themselves at
the South. Lines will be drawn be-
tween the Conservative and the radical
elements. and through that division the
South will again gradually be stirred to
genuine political activities and will re-
achieve a rational political life. Such
a contamination is sincerely to be wish
ed. If the collapse of ''safe and sane''
Democracy is to be followed by a radi-
cal revival within the Democratic or
ganization which will force a cleavage
in the South ON vital and practical ques-
tions of politics, the Democratic defeat
of 1904 will have had more fruitful
and salutary consequence.