Tazewell Republican. [volume] (Tazewell, Va.) 1892-1919, 1906-09-06
THE NEW PARTING OF THE WAYS.
philadelphia Press.)

When the events of today come to be
read in the perspective of the future it
will be seen that the Republican rail-
road rate act and the Democratic pro-
gram of Mr.. William J. Bryan in his
Madison Square Garden speech are a
new parting of the ways in American
affairs.
A new issue is joined by these two,
new lines are drawn and new political
divisions are created. The old is over.
The new is begun. Men may leave the
Democratic party individually. Many
will. But the party as party is be-
hind Mr.. Bryan, he is its accepted lead
er and has uttered its creed in his great
speech. A great speech it was; we are
glad to admit of a manly adversary and
proud as Americans that our old nation
al tradition of eloquent speech is still
nobly maintained by the next Demo
cratic candidate for the presidency.
But for the creed Mr.. Bryan proposes
we have neither quarter nor compro-
mise. The voters of the country must
take their choice between Mr.. .Bryan's
public ownership of public utilities, be-
ginning with railroads, or their regula-
ton, as has been hitherto the accepted
American practice, according to the old
and immemorial principles of the COM
mon law of the land. One path or the
other this country must take, now that
Mr.. Bryan has forced the issue.
The Government ownership of rail-
roads proposed by Mr.. Bryan carries
with it logically and inevitably public
ownership of public utilities at all other
points. Fantastic and impossible as is
his division of the railroads-trunk lines
to Federal ownership and branch lines
to State ownership-still this is frank
recognition that the principle he pro-
poses goes to the root of political issues,
Federal, State and local. In all alike,
Mr.. Bryan's speech makes public owner
ship of public utilities the over-arching
issue of the day.
The open choice is before all the land
and all the years. Either there must be
this hazardous and perilous cruise on
uncharted seas, amid unknown dangers,
under the flag of Government owner
ship, looking for an impossible Utopia,
on which Mr.. Bryan has launched great
historical party and seeks to launch the
nation, or instead, as Roosevelt has led
and inspired and the Republican party
has enacted and is enforcing, the sober
and equitable regulation of great corpo-
rations by the extension of the ancient
and known principles of law.
Evolution or revolution-this is the
choice. Either the policy of the Repub-
lican party must rule, begun in the rail-
road rate act, the meat inspection act
and the pure food act, each the safe,
sane, sound and tried extension of legal
powers and principles already in exist
ence and used by nation and State for a
century, or the nation must face leap
into the dark of Government ownership
in all public works and Enterprises, be
they what they may.
We welcome the conflict with serene
confidence in the result, and we well
come to the support of the policy of
President Roosevelt, of Republican prin-
ciples and the principles of the common
law every American citizen, whatever
his past party relations, who desires law
and not license, evolution and not revo-
luton. For of one thing we may be
certain, Mr.. Bryan knows his party and
knows it's vote. His program, new,
perilous and fantastic as it is, appeals to
vast unrest, ready to vote for this
new step and this dangerous doctrine
more hazardous than free silver and to
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