The Montgomery advertiser., 1908-12-18
GET BACK TO TRUE FOUNDATION.

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 Since the recent election there has been much casting about among Dem ocrats. as to what is the best policy to pursue for the future. Of course the old axiom. Honesty is the best policy" Is as binding in political as private matters. and the Democrats should in accord with that idea hark back to those principles upon which the party was based
 Senator Bacon of Georgia. and Sen ator lcuiberson of Texas. have pub- 'lished statements which ought to make a lasting impression upon all who read them and they should be read of all men. They very sensibly think it is time to be rid of isms and fads- If any Democratic want to go of after new ideas. experimental and untried, 1t is their privilege to do so, but if all will get together upon a Democratic platform. with all rotten timbers discarded. these is hope, pos sibly and probability of victory ahead.
 A few days after the election in 1900 the editor of The Advertiser call ed on Mir. Cleveland at his home in Princeton, N. J., and his words spoken then in the privacy of his home. have special bearing upon conditions as they exist today. After expressing regret that the Republicans seemed to have been given an indefinite lease of pow CT he said the future of the Demo- cratic Party rested with it's Southern members. He had only words of kind- ness for them, and said he could read fly understand why they had been, mis- led into the idea that the free coin- age of silver would better their con dition. He realized that they had lost most of their property. had struggled through four years of war and four more of reconstruction and were ready to accept any plausible theory which offered hope of relief As events were proving the folly of the free silver ag-
 
 itation he said that it was the duty of Southern Democrats resoIuteiy to set themselves to the task of getting back upon old foundations and that whenever they did Democrats of the East and Middle West would take hope and resume their old time ag- gressive activity. As the South alone furnished Democratic electoral votes in 'ss and 1900, those living in other sections of the country would look to them to blaze the way to future ac- tion. but that they would not be fol lowed So long as they voted for pol icies which were Popu1istic rather than Democratic. He said there was no hope for Democratic victory suntil there was complete severance on the part of Southern Democrats from the policies which had already led to two defeats. Since then two more have besn added
 These references to Mr. Cleveland remind one of the political changes of the past sixteen years and are wildly shown in the electoral college of 1908. Tn 1899 there was . solid Democratic South but not a. solid Republican North. Tn addition to the electoral votes of the South there were Ifs from Eastern and Middle West States and the great State of Ohio lacked only 1000 of giving her vote to the Demo- cratic ticket. The President in 1893, result of that election. was a Demo- crat, and both Houses of Congress had Democratic maJoritias. Soon after wards came the break resulting in the displacing of Cleveland and all that he and his friends stood for. and the setting up of the young man of, the Platte in his stead. From that day New York. Connecticut. New Jersey, Indiana, Illinois and Wisconsin became Republican, and the solid South was, broken. Delaware and West Virginia became more Republican than Rhode Island and now Missouri has Joined the same column.
 If Mr. Bryan had Stood steadfast to the tariS principles whose advocacy fin the Fifty-second Congress first gave him prominence and opposed the false issues which have led him to threesde- feats. he might by this time have been President by the votes of a united