The Leon reporter. (Leon, Iowa) 1887-1930, 1907-08-29
POWER OF AMERICAN DEMOC-
RACY.


When the obituaries of the Democratic
party were being written over and over
again between 1866 and 1876, the party
was increasing all the while in power
to respond to the country's demand for
restoration, for constitutional govern
ment in the States and in the United
States, for peace, for economy in taxa
ton and expenditure, for respect from
oi1iceholders for the right of the people
to be secure in property as we'll as in
person.
1t checked coercive government, as it
was then using force to create oppor-
tunity for plumber. 1t took the bayonet
from the polls. 1t drove back to their
dens such jackal horde of political
thieves and hooters as had not been
loosed on any other Caucasian country
in modern times. 1t found not only the
Southern States but almost every State
in the Union infested with bands of
robbers who used the machinery of
Government to organize rapacity, piling
fraud on fraud until the only limit was
the opposition of the Democracy which
had been read out of existence as dead.
1t was this Democracy, not dead then
but living then, as it is now, which re-
stored deeply troubled and almost
bankrupt country to peace and pros
perity.
When the present and the future make
the like demands upon it, it will go on
showing the same living forces in it's
answer to the demand. Its great pow
ers of opposition to the worst possible
abuses of government were never more
strongly called for than by the results
of the last ten years of disregard for
the Constitution and the laws of the
United States, for the constitutions and
laws of the States, for all that is in
tended to check arbitrary power so that
American constitutional freedom may be
perpetuated as the worlds greatest
force of progress.
No blunders of individuals or of mere
organization inside the Democratic
party and no force of opposition outside
can prevent it from doing once more
the work of restoring the country to
safety.
If all that has been said of the capaci-
ty of Democracy for laundering by it's
enemies were true. it would be unim-
portant in comparison with the central
fact of Democratic history in the United
States, the central truth of the meaning
of Democracy everywhere, as it stands
or advances in opposition to the arbi-
trary use of the machinery of govern
ment by officeholders who disregard
constitution and law in the attempt to
perpetuate as political system the or
ganized rapacity of those whose puppets
they are.
Where the organized rapacity of 1876
took millions, it takes tens of millions
now, with the cry always for more. In
no country of Europe in 1907, not in
Germany under the imperialism of the
Kaiser or in Russia under the despotism
of the Car, does arbitrary power
threaten the actual earners of the coun-
try with more intolerable and unneces-
sary extortion from their earnings than
that which threatens the present and
future of the United States. I'M other
country of the world is the feudal power
of private and mercenary organization
now greater in Capitalization and in the
control of all the centralizing agencies
of government than it is in the United
States. 81
When Democracy is the only hope Of
checking such reaction, it can no more
fail at the crisis now than in the past.
Such demand for the unitication of all
been vainly made in the past. 1t will
show now, as it has always shown, that
it is not only fully alive but fully able
to reach results in the spirit which
makes it irresistible as the greatest
force supporting and perpetuating
American law and American liberty.-St.
Louis Republic.