The new age. [volume] (Portland, Or.) 1896-1905, 1906-08-04
rs REPUBLICAN PARTY FACING
EXTINCTION?
RooseVelt's Promised Retirement
Causes Forebodings.
(From the New York Sum-

(From the New York Sum-
There are unmistakable signs that
the process of party disintegration
and realignment, of which we have
had memorable examples in the
United States, is once more far ad-
vanced and irresistible. Once more,
as in 1922 and 1854, party's culmi-
mating triumph has been followed by
symptoms of swift decay and dissolu-
ton. Events will soon determine
whether the Republican party is des-
tined like the Jeffersonian party in
! 1924, or the Democratic party in 1860,
to be- split into fragments or like the
Federalist party and the Wing party,
to become utterly extinct. Experience
has shown that party government is
necessary to the working of represen-
tative institutions: but. of course, it
does not follow that a given party
may not outlive its usefulness. When
that time comes, and the fig tree is
seen to be iTreparably barren. the in
exorable fiat is uttered from the bal
lot box: "Cut it down! Why cumber-
eth it the ground?"
| The history Of the United States I'M
! der the Constitution is strewn with
the wrecks of political organizations
once full of vitality and promise It
would have seemed incredible to AL
/ eXander Hamilton on his deathbed had
he been told that the Federalist party,
which had launched the national gov
eminent which had lost the last presi-
Dental contest by only eight electoral
votes, and would but for Hamilton
hiTY1c GOLF Infn 70 T@f ~
house of representatives, would in
that year 0S04) be able to muster
only about a twelfth of the electoral
votes for its candidate, and 16 years
later would be impotent to carry
single state. How could Jefferson, see
ing the party created by himself ex-
allied to the pinnacle of victory when
in 1920 the last member of the Vir-
ginia dynasty got every electoral vote
but one, conceive or believe that with
in four years that party would be rent
into factions pursuing irreconcilable
aims and rancorously hostile to each
other? How could it have been posi-
BILE for Henry Clay, who was to be
so long the inspiration and the
strength of the Wing party, when he
beheld it sweep the country in 1910 by
a majority of TIA electoral votes to
foresee that it would hold together
but little more than a decade, and
that within quarter of a century it
would have become a memory? How
was it possible for Democrats in 1852,
when Hunkers and Barnburners COM
bined to bear Franklin Pierce to the
white House by the astounding ma
jority of PIP electoral votes, to i'm
anime that within two years their par
ty would be so shattered by the Ne
braska bill that its implacable Sec
lions would in 1860 hold two national
conventions and put forward two rival
candidates? Yet, what Hamilton, or
Jefferson, or Henry Clay, or Franklin
Pierce could not have foretold at the
dates named would have been patent
to every onlooker few years later
AS history never repeats itself pre-
> cisely we cannot expect to find an ex.
act analogue to the existing situation
= in any of the conditions to which we
have referred. There is, however, al
most as sharp a difference today be-
tween those Republicans who accept
for their leaders Senator LaFollette
of Wisconsin, and Governor Cummins
of Iowa, and those whose accredited
spokesman are Senator Spooner and
Senator Aldrich as there was between
: Conscience Wings" and Cotton
!, Wings" or between those Democrats
who advocated and those who opposed
: with vehemence the repeal of the Mis-
> souri, compromise. On the other hand
the Republicans are still held togeth
: err by the force of a magnetic individ
uality, as the Wings were up to 1852
1t is unquestionably true that Theo
= dore Roosevelt has come to personify
as Henry Clay personified, the ener
gies and the hopes of his political or
o ganization. Such process of incar