The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1910-03-08

and gradual temptation these men
| began to guide the destinies of the
dominant party And as the years
went by this invisible, but ind1visible,
group with great ability and some
| genuine degree of patriotism controll-
ed the party in congress.
| Men, strong party men, rebelled
against this group control They
| the grading of giants once nursed
| into life behind the tariff. They
| fought in the off years, but when 1T
came to the presidential election, the
memory of the dead at Vicksburg, or
Gettysburg, at Chickamauga or Shi-
lob, brought them back to the party
which had saved the union and had
restored the slave to liberty. And the
old soldiers in thousands, God honor
them, chung to the colors of the
grand old party incredulOus of the
growing rumors that it was being US
ed by some of its leaders for their
own ends.
Rancors and Agonies of War Pass BY.
And the onsEof those men coming
of that stock which went to war, the
great war" as it has been called, fol-
lowed their fathers in their devotion
| to the Republican party. But by and
by, there was unrest, and more and
more there emerged into sight the
figures of the men whose interests
were allied with those of the manu-
| facturers of the eastern seaboard or
unQ6rWT1IlnR
AS rancorS and agonieS of the war
| passed away and its bitter memories
grew DINNER men looked on the strug-
gle in the south with sympathy and the
bloody shirt no longer stirred them to
wrath. There came along man
schooled In the observation of the
guilty rich because he had grown up
among them; man accustomed TO
fighting corruption in the depths as a
police commissioner and higher up in
the federal civil service; a man who
was familiar with the feeling of the
people because of his long residence In
the west
And with the help of the people, he
tore aside the veil which Shrouded the
barons and the lords Of the house and
the senate and they saw that some oL
them were of greater power outside and
that others were lords paramount I'M
bedded in the system like fly in am
Der.
Forgot Character of Republican Party.
And when they saw the rank and file
of the Republican party were deter
mined to break the baronial grip on
congress and to take back unto them
selves the control of the party which
their fathers had founded, which Lin
coin led. and which belonged to them
by the right of the majority of the
control, the congressional organiza-
tions, long entrenched in power,
thought that there was but one man
against them and they dreamt not that
like Ishmaelites their hand was against
every man and every mans hand was
against them: not for themselves, but
against the oligarchy within the re-
public which they represented.
They forgot the character OF the
rank and file of the Republican party.
They were men bred of its founders,
with the same moral stamina in
them, whose high purpose could not
bear misuse of the party which was
theirs, for private ends or selfish pur-
poses, and now the second generation
of Republicans are prepared to join
issue with those who differ with them,
as to whether a free Republican party
a free people, for they know that no
party can long endure half slave and
half free.
It's Idealism Was Pure.
And what L, have said for one par
ty and have sought to confirm by the
words of the greatest moral figure of
modern times, is still true of both.
shall not soon forget the picture grav-
en- in my mind at Denver when the
baronial Democracy of Tammany hall
and it's allies upstate sat with the
Democracy of Indiana and Illinois,
baron led and trencher fed, and that
shoulder to shoulder with that Demo-
cracy sat Democracy of idealism and
a Democracy of compromise. That
group I contrasted with the Demo-
cracy which sat in the first convention
idealistic not Impractical and I'M
sound, overrode a baronial Democracy
and a Democracy or compromise. Its
idealism was pure, but inconsistent
with underlying economic fact. as
inconsistent as the Jeffersonian Demo-
cracy was with the underlying fact of
slavery.