The Montgomery advertiser., 1904-02-21

longer challenging popular interest, should be manfully abandoned; and the pl esentment of our claims to the peoples 5 confidence should be short, simple and courageous. The redundancy and dreari- ness which have sometimes overwhelmed our campaign declarations, smothering their vital announcements and absolute ly discouraging their intelligent study, have no redeeming quality. unless 1t be considered meritorious to afford an oppor- tunity for rhetorical display. and to furnish place for the deposit and pre- servation of political nostrums. In any event. the present emergency furnishes no room for the qualification of the van Pity of platform constructors. or the pa cification of insistent enthusiasts.
 Democracy seeks to open to the plain people of our land the freest opportunity and the widest field for the enjoyment of thrift and comfort in their homes. It loves equality of benefits under our choS- en institutions. and hates the bestowal of special privileges upon the few at the expense of the many. Therefore. in the message of our party to the people, tariff reform should be demanded; and this de- mand should be intensified by situation which plainly discloses the shelter and aid that existing tariff laws afford to huge monopolstic combinations which menace the sturdiness of our citizenship by closing against the individual the door of independent industrial enterprise.
 Economy in Public Expenditures. Nothing Is moro peremptorily eNacteG by the creed Of genuine Democracy than economy in public expenditure; and this We should unequivocally pledge to the people. Such q pledge naturally grows out of the Democratic belief that the money .t-. .l,c of their Government Is held in trust for that express purpose, and that it's unnec- essary and reckless appropriation, even upon the preteXt of a legitimate further ance of public purposes, Is. bald spolia- ton. Though we need no better reason than this for eXacting the utmost circum- spection and economy in Government eX- penditures. such insistence should be em- phasized by the increasing spread of the contagion of public waste and extrava- gance to our peoples home expenses thus undermining the contented frugality of our individual life and weakening the stamina and endurance of our body poli- tic.
 If this Is to be time of absolute Dem ocratic frankness it is difficult to see why We should indulge in promises to the people which it is not within the com petence of any party in Federal authority to fulfill. We shall arraign as our oppo- nents those who have made promises and broken them. Let us not incumber our selves and delude the people with prom ises which the limitations of Federal au- thority would not permit us to keep. For tunately, tho Democratic party need make no wild and unreasonable pledges of leg isative action to prove its sympathy with the legitimate interests of labor; its ha- tired of monopolstic greed Is so ipstinc- tive that 1t should be known of all men without extravagant and misleading promises of futile interference. and it's obedient regard for every constitutional gift of personal right ought to be beyond question: But the line of demarcation be- tween wrong conditions that can be rec tified by the direct action of the party in control of the general Government, and those that can be reached only through popular sentiment or State regulation. should be clearly kept in view and neither evaded nor mystified At that are worthy of presentation. But be- sides these, and more impressive than them all, are the new and strange ques- tions that recent surprising incidents in our national conduct have forced upon the attention of our countrymen.
 When our government entered upon a War for the professed purpose of aiding NO Sell-gONeEIlIlSnI anu TeledSiiS rum foreign rule a struggling people whose cries for liberty were heard at our very doors, it rallied to its enthusiastic support a nation of freemen. in whose hearts and minds there was deeply fixed by heredity and tradition the living belief that all just powers of government are derived from the consent of the governed.
 It was the mockery of Fate that led us to an unexpected and unforeseen incident In this conflict. and placed in the path of our government, while protesting national righteousness, representing an honest and hherty-loving people, and intent on a he- nevolent' self-sacrifcing errand. the temptation of sordid aEgrandizement and the false glitter of world-power
 Our Fall From Grace.
 1 No sincerely thoughtful American can recrecall what followed without amaze ment, nor without sadly realizing how the apathy of our peoples trustfulness and their unretiecting acceptance of s''