Eagle River review. [volume] (Eagle River, Wis.) 1890-1927, 1908-09-18
TAFT ASKS BRYAN
TO DISCLOSE HIS
OWN PAST RECORD
REPUBLICAN SAYS DEMOCRAT is
TRYING TO SEPARATE HIM
SELF FROM HISTORY.
is REMARKABLE SPECTACLE.
Commoner Has Spent Twelve Years in
Hunt for Campaign Issue and Then
Cannot Find Real One.
NEBRASKAN ONLY AFTER VOTES.

| CINCINNATI, O., Sept 14.-Assert-
ing that his official record, his speech of
acceptance and subsequent utterances
are ample indications of his own polit-
ical position, William II. Taft replied to
| Mr.. Bryan's comment on the Roosevelt
| letter, by switching the spot light of i'll
quiry back to Mr.. Bryans own polit-
ical record, and making an analysis
thereof. This is Mr.. Taft's reply:
Long Hunt for Issue.
! ''In my notification speech and in 9th
| or speeches made since, | attempted to
make clear my position on all the issues
of the campaign. If Mr.. Bryan has been
unable to understand them | cannot
make them clear | stand on my rec
| ord in Office and what | have said. II
Mr.. Bryan should devote little
| time to his own record. from
which he seems to be struggling to
separate himself, with all the adroitness
acquired in twelveyear hunt for an is
sue on which he can be elected Presi-
dent.
Bryan After Votes.
"The readiness with which Mr.. Bryan
| i'll successive presidential campaigns
passes from one paramount issue to an
other shows that the chief consideration
which has affected his selection of an is
sue has been its plausibilty in attract
| ing votes.
He presents the ramerkabe spec
| tacle of one who has been seek
ing the presidency for twelve years
without success and without Off
cial responsibility and without the
opportunity to test the various PROPOSE
tons which he has advocated for re-
forms, and yet of having the event dem
onstrate what a colossal failure he would
have made in each instance, had he been
permitted to carry his proposals in the
policies of the country.
"He does not now answer the question
whether, if he were President and an
exigency should arise in which he would
be called upon to exercise his discretion
affirmatively to maintaining the parity
between gold and silver, he would exer-
else that decretion. He has not permit
ted himself to discuss in this campaign
the issue of anti-imperialism which was
| the paramount issue in 1900 as he de-
| clared.
| Bryan Contradicts Himself.
He now says that he favors the more
rigid regulation of the railways. In
1896 he expressed the view that the rail
roads could not be regulated because the
railroads would own the regulators APP
| pointed by law, and therefore he was IN
favor of government ownership. We
hear nothing from him on this subject.
Instead, by describing his platform, not
| only an announcement of principle,
but as a protection against uncomfort-
able issues, he has attempted to give
bend to keep the peace with respect
| to government ownership, which by its
mere announcement showed its lack OF
the vote catching quality. lie pro-
fesses to have been the father, and now
to be the heir, of the Roosevelt policies,
and yet, i'll no campaign OF three in
| which he has taken part, and two of
which he himself led, did he make them
the paramount issue. Indeed, in the
Parker campaign he took occasion to
charge Mr. Roosevelt with militarism,
and with being completely subject to the
influence of corporations, only to see him
win the greatest peace triumph of the
world, and secure such an effective
stamping out of corporate abuses as to
f! elicit the admiration of the entire coun-
/ try.
Bryan Opposed to Labor.
MIR. Bryan processes to be the great
friend of labor and yet he was one of
the chief supporters in the passage Of
the German Wilson bill that made labor
helpless for four years. He then pro-
posed as a remedy for the disasters to
which labor was thus exposed, the issu-
ing of a fiftycent dollar, which would
have cut in half such wages as there
were, and would have led to the hardest
kind of struggle on labor's part to re-
store its wages to its proper equiv alent
under the gold standard. The country
has been most fortunate that the fall
lacy of Mr. Bryan's railroad PROPOSE
tons has been exposed without the cost
of putting them into actual governmental
practice and it will be fortunate indeed,
if the danger of four years depression,
to which it would be exposed in case of
Mr. Bryan's election, may be averted,
and if by Republican success in Novem-
Der, and subsequent prosperity and by
clinching of the Roosevelt policies, he
may be again shown to be prohpet
| without honor
BRYAN TABOoS SUNDAY TALK.