The news-democrat. (Providence, R.I.) 1906-1909, 1906-10-27
A CAMPAIGN OF COWARDICE.

Little more than a week remains before the
campaign will close and before the citizenship of
Rhode Island will render its verdict at the polls
In previous contest in this state have the issues
been more forcefuly, clearly and convincngly pre-
sented by the advocates of representative govern
ment and honest and decent political methods, or
more cravenly evaded and deceitfuy distorted than
by the candidates of and the apologists for Bray
tonism.
On the one side there has been the fearless and
truthful declaration that popular government has
been supplanted by government by corrupt and
magn oligarchy; that shameless boss directs
the action OF the legislature from the office OF the
sheriff in the state house and sells the laws that
passed for cash to corporations that willing
to pay; that measures designed for the public good
are defeated or stranged in committee by orders
of the boss; that the votes of the venal pur
chased by corruption funds disbursed by the boss
and finally that there be neither representative
government nor an honest administration of public
affairs in this commonwealth until Braytonism, the
author of all these evils and perpetrator of all these
outrages has been crushed and until con-
sttution, broad, liberal and American in its pro-
visions and adequate to the needs OF common
wealth of nearly half million of the most intelli
gent, progressive and loyal people in the republic
has been framed and adopted.
On the other side there has been nothing but
cowardly refusal to meet these issues and mser-
able attempt to deceive the people with the belief
that il is Roosevelt and not Braytonism that is on
Braytonism's candidates and spellbinders
proceeding the insulting assumption that the
plain people OF this state are FOOLS that they are
incapable of using the gifts of reason and under
standing with which the Almighty endowed them.
They are told the boss is bogey and Bray
tonsm myth, and this, too, by men who, while
offering such gratritous affront to their intelli-
gence, asking their support at the polls. Not
of the men who now seeking office as
Republican candidate has had the manliness and
courage to declare what every citizen of this state
who has reached the age of reason knows to be
fact, that boss dominates the legislature and the
government. Not one has dared promise that it
elected he would help to redeem the state from
the mischief and menace of boss rule.
1t is useless for the cowardly creatures OF Bray
tonism to declare that Braytonism is not the domi-
nant issue in this campaign, because the poltroon
platform adopted by Braytonsm's convention
ignored it.
The people, not party conventions, make the
issues and here in Rhode Island Braytonism has
been made the issue by the people. Let the spine
less and spirtless tools the oligarchy has named
for public office squrm and shrink and falsify as
they will, they cannot escape that issue.
But what do the people themselves think of
this campaign OF cowardice? What does. il mean
10 them2
The Republican candidates refuse TO consider
condition so scandalous and malodorous that it
has not only reused the indignation and anger of
the decent citizens OF this commonwealth. but has
made the state by-word throughout tie Union.
They make no promise that if elec,ed they will
labor TO free the state from the odium and the
scandal of conditions the people themselves know
exist here.
Ii follows then that the election Of Brayton-
isn's candidates will mean a continuance Of Bray
tonism's niquities and infsnes. 1t will mean that
the leprosy Of loot and the plague OF plunder will
sffct the body polite still more gricvously and
voltingly in the future than they have ever done
in the past
II will mean that the people will be still more
rapacousy robbed Of their rights, that the de-
barchery of the electorate will increase, that the
disgrreefu mers.-. iisi:S, in the laws Of this