The Paducah evening sun. [volume] (Paducah, Ky.) 1906-1929, 1909-11-30

interstate traffic
On every issue, which relates specifically to
the welfare of the people and the safety of the
republic today Colonel Watterson is aligned
with the enemies of popular government the
control OF interstate carriers and commerce by
the federal government; the conservation of ma
tional resources by the federal government
the protection of American industrial indepen-
dence and the maintenance of the American
wage scale; the safe guarding of our interests
in the Pacific, the extension of executive au
thority in the checking of corporate rapacity.
He can see only Capitalization and state rights.
His thoughts are in the past
We are, after all, but children in the wilder
ness, journeying toward promised land. Con-
issues rise like peaks around us and
we make as if to scale them, when suddenly we
find them barring the way. The more progress
i've seek pass that will lead around. Occasion
ally little band of Socialists settles down in
comfortable cove and attempts to live the ideal
life there, imagining they have found the prom
ised land, but, all the same, doing good and Civ
ing the sojourners rest and an opportunity for
a moments peace and meditation along the
way. The old ones, though, love the peaks
among which they were born, and if they can
not scale the heights mt whose feet they first
saw the light they would not press on, but
Iinger in the rays Of the setting sun amid fami-
liar scenes.
Revolutions areN only upheavaIs which
violently remove Constructions. We are
slowly, almost imperceptibly, drawing nearer
perfection, and as old theories and systems and
policies become obsolete they clash and jar and
their inadequacy is exposed. Meantime new
ideas have sprung into general acceptance. The
attitude of the public mind has changed and
the old-timer attributes the trouble to modern
heresy, as he expresses it, and he prophesies
revolution.
Still the world wags on, and has wagged its
way into the period of the free press and past
the day of civil war and bloody revolution.
Mr.. Watterson even believes Taft was elected
because the people had grown tired of ROose-
welt. lie says so. Listen: Taft was elected
not because of Roosevelt, but in spite of Roose
welt, The country had grown tired of Roose-
welt S lncessantness and strenuosty, and would
not take Bryan because he seemed too much
like Roosevelt Taft, man of straw upon "A
platform of imposture, played to the trade-ln-
spired temper of the time. The people were
thinking more of dollars than of doctrines"
Yet, Taft was nominated by the pro Roose
welt wing of the party, and Mr.. Watterson's
persistent charge against Mr.. Taft was that he
would be dominated by Roosevelt. II was that,
which Mr.. Taft had TO face throughout his cam
spaign before and after his nomination, and it
elected him. Today his enemies are abusing
him for not being enough like Roosevelt, and if
Mr. Taft s swing around the country developed
one fact, it was that the country demands adj
herence to the Roosevelt program.
Whyg The answer to that question is the
answer TO Mr.. WattersOn's prediction of revo-
luton and the overthrow of the Republican
party. The Republican party passed one crisis,
when the Democrats nominated Bryan in 1896
anH in on n aSIlx nils t
passed another when it nominated Taft instead
of Fairbanks. The Republican party turned
sharp corner during the Roosevelt admnistra-
ton. The zenith of materiasm was attained
under the Hanna regime From the moment
Roosevelt gathered up the reins we started on
an era of ethical regeneration. The wilderness
was conquered, the peace of the world assured,
the safety of the Republic and its predominant
Influence established among men. Thence for
ward this nation was to proceed to the perform
ance of its providental mission, which was the
ultimate perfection of justice and equality of
opportunity among all men, as proclaimed in
the declaration of Independence No man can
be a true patriot, who has not conception of
the provdential nature Of this cQuntry's call
lng no man can have such conception who is
not an optimist; and no man can be an optimst
who does not believe we are advancing upward
IT makes no difference to the true patriot
whether the Republican party survives all the
changes, which time and evolution bring; or
whether, like its predecessors, at some sharp
turning it continues straight ahead and finds
itself in a cul de sac of dead issues The old
parties have glorious histories, and in their day
they subserved useful purposes.
That man, acquainted with the rising west
and filed with its free spirit; ripe scholar
from a venerable school of learning, and a
practical student of history, who applied the
lessons Of tho old world 10 tho lnrnhln1nc of fl1