The Birmingham age-herald., 1924-06-25

Rivers, disgraced man, and proved criminal; they compelled Edwin Denby's retirement from the cabinet, after show ing his indifference and incapacity; they unfolded condition in the department of justice that shocked the country and drove Daugherty, the attorney general, back into private life; they pointed to the orgies of Forbes and the scandals of the veterans bureau; they lashed New berry from the senate and they placed a congressman behind the bars.
 There cannot be two opposing rights. If the evils exposed deserved to be ex- posed, then the investigations were rightly ordered and should be applauded by all lovers of the right; and if they are not applauded, when such a show ing is made, the conclusion is unavoid- able that those who keep silent or who condemn investigation are not truly honest, and, even if not personally gain CTS, are so drawn aside by partisanship as to be unable to discriminate right from wrong. And whatever the reason for this mental and moral obliquity, they, and the party they adhere to, cannot longer be trusted with public admins tration or the duty of caring for the safety of the republic.
 It is complete indictment on this score, reinforced, as this capable states man shows, by the fact that in the gen. eral administration there has been fail- ure to fulfill party pledges, notably in the matter of joining with the nations which have established the world court {; the failure to do anything to redeem the promise of the thirty-one distinguish ed Republican leaders made voluntarily and in the expectation of influencing the people to vote the Republican party back into power, a promise which the senator characterizes as "one of the spurious coins of 1920;" the refusal to help the suffering Armenians, dying un- der the Turkish sword, and the contrast ing promptness of action when the Ches- ter concession had to be rescued from the Turks; the deaf ear turned to our own suffering farmers, who have waited for four years for the foreign market to revive, market which Republican tariff legislation does it's best to stifle; {; and the proclamation, "back to the nor nal" which has for it's answer hundreds of bank failures in the wheat belt and more than 600,000 wheat farmers driven into bankruptcy!
 It is a flash as of genius when the senator points to the. Democratic record in contrast to what the Republican party of the last four years has dis played, and tells how fifty-one commit tees of the Republican congress set forth to uncover the assumed dishonesties and deficiencies of the preceding Wilson ad- ministration. Expenditures such as the world had never before known or even dreamed of knowing, and operations of vast magnitude had been carried on in distant lands by the United States; with thousands of hitherto untried agencies, and under circumstances most unusual and offering greater opportunity as well as temptation to dishonest administra- tion; but what did the Republicans find? They searched the record, they chased every rumor, they hunted the country through, and even went beyond the seas. What were the results? The senator chal- lenges answer. Where was found the tainted dollar, where the cabinet minis ter disgraced, where the act reflecting discredit upon any Democratic official?
 It cannot be that the one party has all the vice and the other all the virtue, yet such is the record! How account for this astonishing difference? The answer is found in the word System. It is as Sem ator Harrison points out: The two par ties have different ideals, The Repub- licans believe in and serve big business, namely, the interests; and the Demo- crats serve the people. So, says the senator, it is with trust in the people the Democratic party now makes it's appeal. Every impulse of decency and fair deal ing cries our party on to action, and every good of the republic has need of our party's victory. 'The great army of Democratic men and women will not retreat before the enemy upon the great battle field of this campaign. We shall not fail"