The Birmingham age-herald., 1912-04-11
THE CASE oF TNDERWooD

l dential nomination, and is one recreant to
 the faith of the fathers if he advocates
 MT. Underwood's nomination? These are 1 inquiries which suggest themselves quite
 naturally when we consider the temper
 of some of our contemporaries in discuss Ing his candidacy. Is there any ground
 Tor the assumption that Dr. Wilson is
 the elect and ,foreordained candidate of
 the democratic party2 Another Bryan, di- vinely appointed and commissioned to pre-
 empt the job to the exclusion of every
 other gentleman who may be disposed to
 enter the lists and break a lance with him? Dr. Wilson is yet merely candi-
 date; there are other worthy gentlemen who are also candidates, one of them, MT. Underwood, whose claims for preference
 deserve just as much consideration, per
 haps, as Dr. Wilson's, whose loyalty and
 attachment to the pEty are just as thor | ough as Dr. Wilson's. and whose labors in it's behalf have been at least as long,
 as arduous and as sincere.
 Dr. Wilson is a gentleman of high
 character and great ability, and we are not unalterably opposed to his nomina-
 tion; but he is unfortunate in having be- | come an obsessionsin the minds of some of his proponents and supporters For
 years the shadow of MT. Bryan, glooming the political landscape, blighted the pros poets of any other aspirant in the dem-
 ocratic party for the nomination, and his devotees followed him from defeat to de-
 feat with loyalty worthy of better cause.
 The domination of that good and ineffect-- ual gentleman has ''petered out" Are we
 to have another political obsession?
 Some of the methods adopted to fiyblow
 the candidacy of MT. Underwood are un-
 worthy of large politics. We expect them in politics of the peanut variety. With out any warrant and without any evidence so far as we have been able to ascertain, 1t has been time and again insinuated
 that MT. Underwood is the candidate of the special interests, that he is affiliated with the trusts, that he is the friend of "big business" There is a quibbling style of adventuring such insinuations that Is more reprehensible than the making of direct unsupported statements. and this is the sort of ambushing that is being re- sorted to.
 Perhaps 1t was pardonable at one time in our history that men, in the heat of
 political conflict, should rake over the
 embers of sectional hatreds and revive the dead issues of the civil war in the att
 tempt to discredit a political opponent,
 but that time has passed out of the minds of reasonable and intelligent men. The
 efforts that have been made to damage MT. Underwood because of the union af-
 flations of his grandfather and father oil fo found his adversaries. The facts do not
 make MT. Underwood any less loyal southerner. For the matter of that, if MT. Underwood's friends cared to resort to such crude campaigning methods they
 might well retort that MT. Underwood, after having been educated and having entered business at the north, chose vol
 untarily to remove to the south, and has lived his life here and identified himself
 with the life and interests of the south;
 whereas Dr. Wilson, after having been born and educated In the south, chose in his mature manhood to desert the land of
 his nativity and cast in his lot with our friends north of the Potomac. But this
 really has nothing to do with the merits
 of pr. Wilson or Mr. Underwood.
 l enced and sound observer, Col George
 Harvey. commenting on a letter written to his journal:
 l "Our friend doubtless speaks truly when
 he says that Bryan and his followers,
 or rather some of his followers would re-
 ject Mir. Underwood, even at the polls.
 But why? Is it because he. the first
 really brilliant leader Congress has de- veloped in score of years, has been I recreant to his trust or faithless to demo-
 cratic doctrine? Is it not rather simply
 and solely because he has rejected the
 fads and fancies of populism and manl-
 festly refused to crook the pregnant hinges of the knee to an unauthorized
 dictator? What sort of position would the
 democratic party be in today if MT. Un-
 derwood, by meekly yielding to Mr. | Bryans autocratic dictum, had permitted I the democratic House to demean itself
 in the eyes of all intelligent citizens?
 There is one further point in connection
 with MT. Underwood to which our corre- spondent does not allude. It is often re- marked that the time has not yet come when a southern man can be elected President. That. we declare in firm be-
 lief, is not fact The north and east
 would like nothing better than an oppor- tunity to prove their faith in a truly
 united country by electing the right kind of southern man President. We may re- i mark in passing, moreover, that we doubt | if our friend, who resides in Washing ton. begins to comprehend how many hun
 dreds of thousands of both republicans and democrats are convinced that oscar I Underwood is pre-emnently that kind"