The daily morning journal and courier., 1906-07-14
STEALING THE DEMOCRATIC
 THTTNDER.


 THUNDER.
 We congratulate the country" the Pennsylvania Democrats say in the platform they have just adopted, upon the fact that the only prominence which the present Republican National Administration has attained has been achieved by a feeble and pretended ap- plication of the principles enunciated by the Hon. William Jennings Bryan, the great Democratic commoner, who is now regarded as the certain suc- cessor of Theodore Roosevelt in the presidency" It is not open to dispute that the present Administration owes it's popularity in large measure to its advocacy of doctrines which Mir, Bryan has preached, but the gentleman from Nebraska will never obtain a patent for any of these doctrines. If he em- braced them in advance of the radical Republican leaders, it is a tribute to his prophetic vision rather than to his sense of time-liness. The man who first enunciates a political doctrine rarely survives to carry it into practi- cal effect. Some people are habitually ahead of their time. They see more quickly than others how certain in- Hoyation might profitably be introduced but after they have worn themselves cut in the cause somebody else usually comes along and gathers the fruit of their agitation.
 To a certain extent this is true of Mir Brayn's 1896 and 1900 principles, He was ahead of his time, as were the other radical Democrats of the West. The country was not ready to aoquiesce in what then seemed revolutionary pro- positions, such as government control of the railroads. But times have changed and our outlook has changed with them. The corporations have grown, and in increasing their dimen- sions they have not expanded their benevolence. What had, and properly, the appearance of a doubtful paterna- lism in 1896 seems now a necessary safeguard against the indefinite de- velopment of monopolistic power and avarice. Mir, Bryan sowed the seed of protest, but it was left to Mir Roose- welt to reap the harvest It would have been impossible to pass the Hepburn Rate bill ten years ago even if Bry- an had been elected; now it is going through its final stages in Republican Congress because the Republican party, under President Roosevelt's lead, de- mands it.
 In all this admiring talk about Mr Bryan it should be remembered that the Republicans have not stolen his whole equipment of thunder They have no use for his free silver issue nor will they do anything to further his anti-imperial notions. His opposition to a sound currency and to the reten- ton of the Philippines looks as unat- tractiVe now as 1t ever did, and no Republican National Convention will be found indorsing this or certain other of his political vagaries. The Repub- liean theft of his platform called for strioter Government oversight of the so-called trusts. As to whether the ad- ministration's application of this does
  Urine has been feeble and pretended," the voters of the country may be trust ed to pronounce at the polls. The Pennsylvania Democrats are at liberty to think that MT. Bryan would have done better in Mir. Roosevelt's place, and to say that he "is now regarded as the certain successor" of the present Chief Magistrate, though that is the language of partisan enthusiasm rather than a plain statement of demostrable fact
 Mir Bryan will have to reckon with Fr Hearst before he secures even the Democratic presidential nomination, and after that he will still be con fronted with a certain formidable or ganization known as the Republican party, which has shown itself meas uarbly awake to the demands of the day and which the Democracy has suc- ceeded in beating only at times of such excessive popular dissatisfaction as does not exist at present.-Providenc Journal