Daily Arizona silver belt., 1908-11-18
MIR. BRYAN ON DEMOCRATIC
 DEFEAT

lIS ALlAlEAO0 LSRCo 0&Ae kNaAS AVA sSAS AN ture of the great opposition party. Un- able at the moment to fathom the caus es of defeat, he is moved to consign the whole subject to the realm Of mys- tery. In his view, what seemed during the entire canvass to be a victorious advance was on the day Of election suddenly turned into an overwhelming rout. With amazement he turns to his friends for explanation of what appears to be to him an inexplicabls about-face of public sentiment. We are bound to say the mystery MT. Bryan feels to er shroud his defeat is not apparent to other political diagnosticians. Most of them are now certain, however they may have wabbled during the cam paign, that MT. Bryan was foredoomed to failure in his third attempt to win the presidency. To enemies in his own household explanation is easy. Tho American people, they say, will have none of Bryan or of Bryanism. A | friendlier view is that the forces against which Mir Bryan had to contend were miscalculatsd; that the combination of party long intrenched in power with the capitalistic and agrarian interests were too strong to be overcome; that contented yeomanry and discontented and unemployed proietariat yearning for prosperity that could be effective ly promised only by party allied with moneyed classes turned the scale against the democratic hosts.
 The truth is that MT. Bryan was out generated by the astuts and masterful politician who placed MT. Taft in nom ination and conducted the republican campaign from the White House. All the currents of public opinion which MT. Bryan fancied were making for his cause were as familiar to MT. Roosevelt as to the Sage of Fairvisw. The pres ident by the initiation of "my poll cies," turned these currents into chan nels under his own control. The rising tide of radicalism threatening to engulf the republican party Mir. Roosevelt stayed by wrestling from old-time lead CTS the guidance of that organization and by injecting into 1t the vitalizing elixir of new-republicanism. He placed before the people presidential candi- date free from entangling alliances with plutocracy, yet acceptable to men of wealth; pledged to reforms; yet ju- dicially disposed toward tboss who con sidered themselves victims of reforma- tory zeal. With an extraordinary com mand of seemingly incongruous ele- ments, Mir. Roosevelt marshaled tha var ious forces enumerated above in support of his candidate. Those who distrusted the commander and those who adored him wers impartially enlisted for Taft; the rich and the poor, the happy and the unhappy, the multi millionaire and the outof-work, the sufferers from 8 panic laid at the door of the White House and those who felt 1t not-all were brought together onto the common ground of material hope for prosperity and moral hope of reform. To put it in nutshell, MT. Bryan was beaten at his own game, impaled on his own weapons. The field he has been so care. fully culitvating for so many years past has also been cultivated by another, and finally wrested from him. That MT. Bryan himself sees this is shown by his remark that the democratic party has accomplished much even though out of ofdce. It has done so because the re- publican party, under the leadership of MT. Roosevelt, has adopted the famil- far plan of ''dishing'' the political en- emy by taking over in a conservative way the best of its reformatory pro- posals.
 That the democratic party has a for nndable task before 1t to overcome a political organization so tightly in grasp Of governmental power and SO well re- garded by the people is mere truism. The snug assumption in certain quarters that all would have gone well if MT. Bryan had abdicated his leadership, and that future victory lies within reach simply by going back to the old demo cratic ideas and dogmas, may be dis missed as almost too silly for discus- sion' ignoring, as 1t does, the most pal pablo facts of the political situation the method by which the election was won and the means by which MT. Bryan held his party together. Other leaders may arise, other issues may come for ward, but, as MT. Bryan points out, the democratic party has started on a COnrca from xuh{cb IA na-.-A