The Black Hills union and western stock review. [volume] (Rapid City, S.D.) 1904-19??, 1904-09-16
Its Professions and Promises
Compared with Its
Performances.
gERITABLE CALAMITY PARTY
breaches the Gospel OF Discomfort and
Wastes Time in Obstructing Wise
and Beneficent Republican
Policies.

Congressman J. Adam Bede tells o
meeting Il typical member of the part,
OF promises and calamity howlcrS. III,
democrat had lust come ont Of a salno!
When he told Bcdc he had heen buyin.
some lining for his untlerclothes. II
reply to Bedc's query as to how he wa.
getting on, the unfortunate desciplc o
Jefferson answered:
THAT his horse went dead and his nut,
went lame.
Ana II" lost six COWS in Il poker game:
men Il hurricane came. on II summers uay
ana blew the house where he lived away
And an earthquake came when that wa.
gone
And swallowed the land that tho bous,
stood OIL
Then the tax collector soon came round
And charged him up with the hole in the
ground
Bede said that his friend thought thai
was carrying the single tax too far. But
IT you could analyZe his case and thos,
or all chronic complainers and kickcr>
you would lind that. out of Il hundred
OF them, at least ninety-eght ought tc
50 out and kick themselves.
Short OH Performance.
Democrats do not know the meaning
OF the word performance" when an
piled to doing anything for the gen
eral good, the advancement Of the hui
man race, or the betterment Of man
Kind. AS a party it has been trying
to write it for more than a full round
century, and yet it has not succeeded in
forming the first letter. 10 do anything
constructive or of permanent benefit
seems utterly beyond it's moral and
psychic conception, or physical capacity
to perform. Its normal attitude is with
Its face to the past and it's back TO the
future 1T never sees an opportunity ull-
til the issue has been permanently set
tied by the Republican party and public
sentiment. Then it will stand up, with
unblushing and inconceivable effrontery
and say Il did it,
If the question Of locomotion, with
1t, depended upon the two limbs Of prom
Use and performance, it would limp
through its course a loathsome deformity.
Ihe promise leg would reach several
times around the earth and then to the
moon, while the performance member
could not be found. intact with a pow
erful magnifyng glass. 1t has been a
helpless victim Of promisephobia for n
hundred and one years. and there is not
q single symptom of relief in sight. The
disease is conceded by the best author
tiles to be fatal, but slow death car
rles its own peculiar form of retributive
punishment.
Founded on a Mistake.
Jefferson. its father, while man of
deep learning and consummatc diplo-
macy. hated Washington, and carly op-
posed the cardinal principles of the Fed
eral Government. He organized the
Democratic party to aid him in this op-
position. Washington and Hamilton
wanted strong protective government,
Jefferson wanted weak Government
that would govern the least Founded
on the idea of resentment, resistance, ne
CATION, subversion and an academic and
false conception OF personal privilege,
the party has quite naturally been
"forninst' all sane measures directed
toward the healthy progress of the coun-
try and the real advancement Of its peo-
pie. Being a party of opposition and
obstruction its policy has been to prea CHI
calamity and foster discontent; to prom
Use everything and actually do nothing.
Party odium Under Jackson.
If jefferson was the founder of De.
mocracy. Jackson is it's patron saint AZ
ter the Jeffersonian period, 1SO1-25. came
the J;Wksonian, 1S25-4O. The signif-
canoe of the Jackson era of Democracy
lies in the fact that he was able to build
machine from the rabble or the less
educated classes. that enabled him act
ually to assert his claims in conflict with
n tutin ~,
of Republicanism. He assumed a posi-
ton between Congress and the people, as
it were; as a patriarchal ruler of the re-
public. The curse of Jacksons ad-
ministration was that it weakened re-
spect for law. The first clear symptom
Of the decline of a healthy political spirit
was the election and reelection of Jack
son to the Presidency. His administra-
ton paved broad way for the demon
allzlng transformation of the American
people. Under Jackson, politics were
vulgarzed and American society was de-
"prived of its rightful influence over gov
eminent.
Partisans, Not Patriots.
The twenty years from the defeat of
Van Buren, in 1910 to the defeat of
Douglas in 1860 brought additional dis
aster and odium upon Democratic ad-
ministration. The strength of the party
has always rested in the Solid South.
and the uneducated riffraff of our great
cities. During the years mentioned the
Southern Democracy pursued a policy of
territorial expansion, not out of patriotic
or broad motives, but for the sole pur-
pose of increasing the number Of slave
States, and thus preserve the sectional
balance in the Senate. These years are
memorable in history for the struggle
for territorial acquisition, the struggle
over the Wilmot Proviso, the Compro.
mise of 1850, the repeal Of the Missouri
Compromise, for the long agony in Kan
sas, for the sensational bred Scott de-
cision, and for the reconstruction of the
party on strictly sectional lines.
Rapid Moral Decay.
During all these weighty history-mak-
lug years. the Democratic party was
tha willing accomplics of the Southern