The Birmingham age-herald., 1908-01-24

reformer, and it will take years to settle 1t. And in the meantime the democratic
 party is ready to give the government an efficient administration"
 MT. Bryan at this point gave an illustra- ton of this argument in the description of
 Virginia sect who didn't believe the
 world round. but rather thought 1t was fiat. Some of them, however, became
 skeptical one finally admitting that if It
 was round and moving that 1t was either
 moving mighty slow or running like blue
 bazes.
 Up fin our country we find large num-
 Der of republicans who find that our prin-
 ciples are being vindicated. I can remeim- Der the time when our high financiers
 said we didn't know anything about
 money. and they insisted that money could be no good unless 1t could stand
 the melting process. There Is 50 per cent
 more money per capita now than in 1896, | and yet the people are clamoring for
 more. They used to make fun of my sil- yer dollars, but now it has moved up. and
 Its place has been taken by cashiers
 checks and clearing house certificates.
 They are mighty glad to get the silver dollar to redeem these certificates with.
 Just try the melting pot test on cash ier's check and see what 1t will stand. Demonstrating Trust Problem. We used to have trouble in demon | strating the trust problem; we had diff hculty in proving they were trusts and had to collect the proof. But now the
 problem Is so well understood that the re- publicans even admit It. The trust fam | fly has grown so large, it's birth rate Is so , much larger than its death rate, that 1t
 even accords with the Presidents idea of
 size.
 When we insisted on the violators of the trust law being put In jail we were accused of wanting to stir up trouble, but the matter has grown so that even Secre- tary Taft admits that one or two of the trust maenates should be put in jail when they unreasonably break the trust law. Unreasonably We might as we'll say that a burglar should not burglarize
 unreasonably; that a man should not be
 unusually brutal in committing murder. Even those republican newspapers who
 have fought us, have had to go to Wash ington and ask along with democratic
 papers that protection be given them against the paper trust, which was formed
 under the very nose of the President. In
 the meantime the price of wood pulp is
 going higher and higher. The republicans have had a majority in Congress for years. They could have repealed or
 passed any law they wanted to.
 Knows Trust Is Menace.
 "The public has reached a point where
 they know the trust is menace. The reason Roosevelt wants Taft Is not be- cause he is his idea of a reformer. but
 the nearest thing to 1t in the cabinet.
 l am not going to criticize the President for not having reformers in his cabinet.
 There are not enough reformers in the
 republican party to fill a cabinet The President has done great work 6 |. A..t whenever reform was planned by the re- publicans they have come to the demo-
 cratic platform for their plans and speci- fications.
 We made some progress in railroad rate reform. I am glad Governors Conner,
 Smith and Glenn and others have taken up the matter. I've always insisted that
 reforms should be added to and not sub stituted for states rights
 MT. Bryan spoke of the Senate as be-
 ing stifled with railroad attorneys and
 corporation lawyers, and said it was al-
 most impossible to get certain railroad laws passed.
 Let us find out what the railroads are actually worth for we have a right to stop the issuing of watered stock. Here we have panic in the midst of pros- perity. It has robbed the people of mIl- lions of dollars and the only good thing it has done was to put away the time-hon- ored argument of the republicans that 1 they don't have panics when the republic
 ans are in power. And that may help great deal. The fact remains, however, that the panic was caused largely by wa | tered stock.
 | MT Bryan then outlined how a panic l is brougn. on, and when he reached the point where hanks substituted checks for money he said he would not criticize the
 banks. 'Bai vixen we come to the point