Ottumwa tri-weekly courier. [volume] (Ottumwa, Iowa) 1903-1916, 1915-08-03
MURDOCH SINGS
PRAISE OF PARTY
SPOKESMAN SAYS PRoGRESSIVES
WILL WIN IN THE ELEC.
TIONS OF 1916.

; Mt Pleasant, Aug. 2.-Victor Muir
dock of Kansas, chairman Of the pro-
gressive national committee made the
following statement to chautauqua
audience yesterday:
Il have just completed three
months personal canvas of the situa-
ton with the progressives in the CEN
| trail west and on the Pacific coast, and
after making it l am ready to say
fiatfootedly that we progressives are
going into the 1916 fight as party
and to win
Moreover. meeting Of representa-
tive progressives held this month, in
New York City reported the same con-
ditions IN tbe~east that + have found
in the west, and they are lining up for
the next battle. This also is the Centi-
Hment of the progressive national CON-
mittee. We will hold our national
convention early and nominate
ticket
"The great convention battles Of
1916 will not be over candidates., but
will be over platforms. The storm will
rage, not in the committee on creden-
tials, but in the committee on resolu-
TONS The bourbon republican lead
crship will not only insist on stand
pat credit, but will fight for an un-
stinted and unequivocal Endorsement
of the administration of William How
ard Taft. including the Payne-Aldrich
tariff bill.
The democratic leadership likewise
will point with pride to the equally
lamentable Simmons Underwood tariff
bill, and against Bryan instruction
of the first magnitude will cancel the
one term presidential pledge ana other
Bryan propaganda; and the progress
sives will reiterate and re-emphasize
their Chicago platform of 1912. That
platform remains the most nearly per-
feet utterance of the principles OF
Abraham Lincoln of modern times.
Both in it's protest against the In
roads of privilege fattening on ga era
of gross materialism and in its prac-
teal program of concrete economic
remedies, the progressive platform has
become to hundreds of thousands Of
aggressive Americans the ark of the
covenant and there Is not township
anywhere without it's group of Gittites
devoted wholly and solely to its perser-
walton.
"The progressives have the right
plan for the tariff and other economic
issues, including the trust problem.
The democrat leadership, after two
and half years trial, has signally
failed in solving the nations economic
questions. It's tariff law, slammed to-
gether under the old log-rolling leader
ship, is utterly unproductive OF any OF
the results previously claimed for It,
It's trust legislation founders, its at
tempts at development of American
ocean-going craft have fzzled. That
this is the judgment of the voter Is
amply evidenced by the tremendous
anti-democratic sentiment that has
developed at the polls at virtually
every election in the last two years.
At many of these selections the voter
cast republican ballot because he be-
lieved that the republican leadership
had learned its lesson and would here
after take the progressive path.
But now the voters know for GER
tainty that when the republican leader
ship has been restored to power 1T has
shown more, not less, reactionary ten
denotes, as is notably evidenced by the
actions of the legislatures in New
York, Ohio and Massachusetts. Hand
in hand with the progressive PROPOSE
ton to encompass social and indus
trial justice, goes the necessity of solv-
ing the great economic problems of
the country, not on the basis of
political advantage, of which practice
both the old parties are UNANIMOUSLY
guilty but on the basis of service to
society.
Everywhere l found these progress
sives who made the fight of 1912 with
that idea uppermost, eager now to con-
tinue the fight Wherever they have
had a chance to make good they have
done so.
The spectacle Of republican reac-
ton in New York and Ohio, in con-
trast to progressive achievement In
California under Governor johnson, is
dramatic portrayal Of the need OF the
new strong patriotic party OF public
service. Therefore, the progressives
will go with it's fight straight out and
tiat-footed.''