The Montgomery advertiser., 1904-12-21
ADvscn NOT WAITED.

 half column of its editorial space to telling Democrats what they should do. winding up with this characteristically impertinent paragraph:
 What Is to become of the remaining one political haven open to them at the moment They will have to act with the Republican party until the madness which has seized upon those who once were Democrats shall have run it's course. To attempt to main- tain a separate political organization would merely be to waste strength. Acting with the Republican party, the Democrats can accomplish something; ing. s-
 If Democracy really needed advice 1t might welcome it from a friend but it needs none from a political Judas Iscariot or Benedict Arnold. The Chronicle trained with the Democrats. at least the Northern ones. as long as 1t could see any profit in it. Then it denounced Republicans and Republi- canism as bitterly as any of us, and any reader might have thought it was really a Democratic paper, but that was when it thought Democracy would succeed and thus 1t would be to the papers interest to bring up its record and show that it had done good ser vice for the Party. When it became apparent that Roosevelt would certain ly be elected The Chronicle made haste to summersault into. the Republican band-wagon and from that day Democ- racy has had no more bitter or un- scrupulous enemy. nor has the South had a more unprincipled traducer. The Chronicle talks as if the Demo- cratic Party was still bound fast Co the car of Populism, and that 1t must continue to accept leadership from those who have more than once led 1t l to inglorious defeat. and that the only | refuge for the genuine Democrats is in i the Republican ranks. The proposi- | tion is as ridiculous as it Is offensive. I What has that Party to offer real | Democrat? It is sound on the finan- cial question, for no other reason than | that it is compelled to be. If the Democratic Party in 1896 had declared plainly and unequivocally for the gold standard the Republican organization would have been forced into opposition. Some of its most trusted and influential leaders at that time were as rampant | advocates of free coinage as Mir Bryan himself was, and The Chronicle knows | it.
 | The Democracy in 1898, and later, | forced the Republicans to take posi- ton in favor of sound money. else they would have had no issue to go before the country on. If the Democrats in that year had adopted a straight-out | gold standard platform and nominated a man of the Cleveland stripe on it the Republicans would have been forced to take the other side and the issue would not have been doubtful. for right would heresy of free coinage would have been buried beyond hope or danger of resurrection. It was the irony of fate that the Party which has always stood for good government should have been | drawn into a position which gave the | versy and enabled them to achieve a victory which they could not have hoped for but for Democratic blunder- ing and what can only be looked on as political idiocy.
 But The Chronicle and all of its kind may as we'll learn that there is some- thing better for the real Democrats of the country than absorption by Roose- veltism in the shape of the Republican Party. There are yet left those who have not bowed the knee unto Baal," and we firmly believe that the real Democrats of the country will again get control of the Party and will bring it back to sanity and sound principles. They may not do it this year or next. | They may not be able to so control and | discipline and guide it as to win the next national campaign, but they must and will win in the end. True Democ- racy is as indestructible as truth it. self, and although 1t may go down in defeat, as 1t has done on a number of occasions, 1t will rise again and assert itself for the good of a common coun- try and a common people. We would have little hope for the future of this Union if we could be forced to believe 'that the Party and the influences which now dominate 1t would hold on without l limit.
 l Meanwhile, if The Chronicle wants to get busy it will do we'll to confine itself to correcting the errors and wrong doings of the organization into whose lap 1t precipitated Itself when 1t saw profit for itself in so doing. Let it try to do some good, if that will not put too much strain on it, and cease