The Montgomery advertiser., 1907-04-22
BRYAIy'S NEW BOMB
HIS LATEST IS INITIATIVE AND
 REFERENDUM.
Democrats Must Swallow His New Medicine or Do Without Him.
 His Threat starts

ASAa1
 Democrats Must Swallow His New
 Medicine or Do Without Him.
 His Threat Starts
 Trouble.
 Raymonds Washington Special to Chi
 cago Tribune.
 Cold chills ran up and down the backs of old line Democrats of Washington when they read the report of the midnight speech in Brooklyn of William bryah the hs ana a0t endum but announced that he and the Democratic party would have to sepa- rate unless it accepted that doctrine
 MT Bryan's speech at the Jefferson banquet of the Brooklyn Democratic Club was made at such late hour that no report of it appears in the carrier Ir,,l was more peculiar because all the earlier speakers at the banquet indulg- ed in the most fulsome praise of MT. Bryan, hailed him as. the acknowledg- ed prophet of Democracy and bespat- tered him with praise as the next presidential candidate of the united Democracy. All this was before MT. Bryan made his speech.
 Some of the speakers who lauded him in his absence must have regret ted their enthusiasm when the peer less one" returned along about mid night and proceeded to nail the initi- alive and referendum to his masthead and dare Democracy to haul down that flag The issue made was a clear one. the old doctrine. which was first sprung upon a patient people by the long haired Populists of Kansas and Nebraska, when Bryan was still an unknown quantity in political ranks.
 His speech was of such a sensational charactere that he has precluded him. self from crawling out as he did on the. Government ownership proposition. nr~ ha nfrnr n sink or swim, live or die, survive or perish, he is for the initiative and ref erendum, and if the Democratic Party is not for the same compound policy, Party, because it will have to do with out William Jennings Bryan forthwith and forevermore.
 Leading Democrats here are astound- ed at this new turn of affairs. Some of them followed Bryan into the last ditch on the silver question, because they wished to be considered regular, and regularity is a religion dear to the heart of the Democratic Party. Others in the reunited party could not follow MT. Bryan into tho sixteen to they have come back into the party and have been willing to accept him as their leader on the theory that the sixteen to one issue had been decently advancing years and his accumulation of gold mortgage bonds had come to represent a conservative Democracy on which the entire party could unite. of the fact that William Jennings Bryan could have been nominated by exclamation, and if nominated on a reasonable sort of platform could have cratic strength. North and South, sibiy Mir. Roosevelt himself
 Now all of this Is changed. The old time nemncraffp leaders have Gnddnn- ly discovered that Bryan has a new vagary and that he will insist upon the initiative and referendum, a Pop ulist theory. which is good in spots. racy so long as he remains at the head of the party The conservative Dem ocrats are all at sea again. They don't MT. Bryan has defied them to vote against the initiative and referendum and openly declared that he would cry man who did not accept this su- preme test of Jeffersonian Democracy of the Bryan type. It is almost impos- sible to believe that the old time lead init themselves to vote in a National Convention for a plan which is so dis tinctly Populistic in It's history and impractical in it's inevitable tendency.
 It was about nine months ago that Government ownership was sprung up- on the people and then dropped in- side. of ten days. Now MT. Bryan is to the fore again with another panacea for popular ills. This time it is the initiative and referendum, and MT. Bry- an has burned his political bridges, be- his speech after midnight he said:
 You may differ with me in many things in regard to party doctrines. but if you do not believe in the ca selves. which is what the initiative and referendum means. I will drive you out of the Democratic Party I repeat that I will drive you out of the Democratic ty does not believe in the rule of the people 1t will have no trouble in driv- ing me out"
 Mr. Bryan will have a whole lot of trouble in uniting his party on this basis This is evident from talks with Democratic leaders here.
 The United States as a republic is essentially a government by represent ative action. The whole theory of government is to secure to the people the right to elect their own represent atives:: At the same time the found- care to avoid the danger of making the Government too responsive to a burst of popular passion. The Senate was interposed as check upon the House of Representatives and the Pres ident himself was required to be elect ed, not by a popular vote. but through the Interpretation of an electoral col- lege. The Senate was intentionally re- moved from direcet popular vote, and even legislatures elect only a third of the Senate each two years
 As for there being an initiative or referendum throughout the United States on matters of Federal legisla- tion or on appointments to office or on ratification of treaties the idea is al most too preposterous to be considered seriously.
 Conservative Democrats generally take this point of view, and they say that if MT. Bryan persists in his dec- laration on this subject 1t will either or will at least make his defeat abso- lutely certain, no matter who the can didate of the Republicans may be.
 Trials are to build us, not to break us." says the philosopher of The Chi ca ErihI1ra TrIa ir, h,