The progressive farmer. [volume], August 02, 1904, Page 8, Image 8

About The progressive farmer. [volume] (Winston, N.C.) 1886-1904

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THE PROGRESSIVE FARMER
Tuesday, August 2, 1904.
X
1
EDITORIAL
CURRENT EVENTS: THE DRIFT OF THINGS AS
WE SEE IT.
Excepting the assassination Thursday of M. von
Plehve, the Russian Minister of the Interior, last
week was barren of events of the first order of
importance. The meat packers' strike continued
and grows more ominous; Tuesday the National
Democratic Executive Committee met and elected
Thomas Taggart, of Indiana, as National Chair
man; Wednesday a delegation of prominent Re
publicans broke the news gently to Mr. Theodore
Roosevelt that he had been named as his party's
candidate for President; in the Far East several
minor battles between Jap and Cossack were
reported.
The Assassination of Von Plehve.
The assassination of M. von Plehve, the lead
ing member of the Russian cabinet, was by far
the most momentous event of last week- The
Czar alone excepted, there was no more powerful
man in the Russian Government than Von
Plehve; it is possible, in fact, that the Czar him
self was a less potent factor in the administration
than his great minister killed by a bomb thrown
by a Finnish anarchist last Thursday. The con
sternation excited in Russia was much like that
caused by the fatal attack on President McKinley.
Unlike our President, however, Von Plehve had
done much to arouse the hatred of the masses,
had done much to stir the bitterest furies in the
human breast; and he had long lived in hourly
dread of the assault which came last week. The
reactionary policy of the" aristocratic Russian
monarchy had no fitter exponent than Von Plehve.
He believed that the common people had no
rights that the government was bound to respect.
The crudest instances of Russian tyranny the
massacre of the Jews at Kishinev and the heart
less oppression of Finland were ascribed to him,
and the Czar has for years been led to favor a
more drastic policy than he would have endorsed
but for the influence of Von Plehve. It is worthy
of note that the dead niinister's predecessor was
also assassinated, and that only a few weeks ago
General Bobrikoff, Governor of Finland, was shot
by some fanatic crazed by the sufferings of his
country. We would not be understood as justify
ing these assassinations, but they are the natu
ral and inevitable results of efforts to govern peo
ple in the twentieth century by the cruel methods
of the Dark Ages.
Political Notes.
We do not know very much about Mr. Tag
gart, the new Democratic Chairman, except that
he was the leader of the Parker forces in his State
and has always been an earnest party worker
whether the nominee was Cleveland or Bryan.
We are inclined to regard him as the best selec
tion that could have been made preferable to
Sheehan of New York, Gorman with his foxy
tricks, or August Belmont with his Wall Street
alliances. Perhaps the ruling motive in the selec
tion of Mr. Taggart, however, was a desire to
give representation to the Middle West, both can
didates on the Presidential ticket being from the
East.
One of the features of last week was the rumor
and its prompt denial by the gentleman involved
that Mr. Henry G. Davis, the venerable Vice
Presidential candidate, was about to commi
matrimony. Mr. Davis is eighty-one years old and
as the Vice-President's chief business is to wait
for the President to die, the country is still won
dering why a man of his years was named for sec
ond place on the ticket. And this reminds us that
one of the happiest political articles of the year
is Mr. Dooley's letter on the Vice-Presidency
which he begins with the two scintillating para-
graphs which we have reprinted in another
column.
Judge Parker will be formally notified of his
nomination August 10th, and his letter of ac
ceptance will appear shortly thereafter. Perhaps
no other letter of acceptance for twenty-five years
has been awaited with so much interest. Barring
his gold standard telegram, the people know prac
tically nothing of Judge Parker's personal opin
ions and how the party platform will be modified
by these opinions. There is no difference, so far
as known, between his financial policy and that
of the Republican and the people are anxious to
see to recur to Mr. Dooley again whether or
not there is justification for the Irish philoso
pher's latest remark:
" 'Has th' candydates accipted th' nommyna-
tion f'r prisident? asked Mr. Hennessy. 'No.'
said Mr. Dooley, fth' commities haven't med up
their minds whether they will give th' Dimmy-
crat nommynation to Rosenvelt an' th' Raypub-
lican nommynation to Parker, or vicay varsy.
It don't make much diff'rence annyway.'"
Except on the negro question which still re
mains the paramount issue in the South the par
ties are undoubtedly nearer together than at any
other time for the last twenty years. And with
the two parties less sharply divided as to great
political issues, the personality of the Presiden
tial candidates, of course, will be an unusually im
portant factor in this year's campaign.
The Democratic State Executive Committee
of North Carolina also met Tuesday. Senator
Simmons was unanimously re-elected Chairman
and Mr. A. J. Feild Secretary. A set of rules to
govern the holding of party primaries was adopt
ed, and a general sentiment in favor of the legal
ixed primary was reported. This system now
obtains, we believe, in every other State which
has disfranchised the larger part of it3 negro
citizens. The Committee also decided to work for
joint canvasses between Democratic and Republi
can candidates.
Among our political notes the defeat of the dis
pensary in the Wilmington election last week
should also have attention a defeat by a majority
of 690 in a total vote of 1,902. This is the first
important election of the year in which the tem
perance forces have failed. The liquor question
is likely to play a very large part in the State
campaign this year, and Senator Simmons is
quoted as saying that the Watts Law will be one
of the leading issues of the campaign.
Joseph W. Folk for Governor of Missouri.
The nomination of Joseph W. Folk for Gover
nor of Missouri last week is a notable triumph for
decency in politics. No one else in America has
done so much to expose and punish bribery and
corruption in office, and the fact that the com
mon people of Missouri stood by him and brought
him promotion instead of the political death with
which the corrupt boodlers and bosses threatened
bim this should be an inspiration to every Amer
ican who is working for a nobler civic life. In this
connection, it may be interesting to recall what
we wrote of Mr. Folk nearly two years ago when
his work had only well begun:
"A year or two ago Mr. Folk was a young St.
Louis lawyer of not unusual prominence, and to
help him along his friends urged his nomination
for Circuit Attorney. The machine did not see
any reason to object, and he was nominated, every
body supposing that Mr. Folk would be satisfied
to plod along in the well-worn paths of his prede
cessors. True, he did say that if elected he
would do his full duty without fear or favor, but
that was not unusual platitude. And so he was
elected, and immediately set about protecting the
public interests of his city, believing with all his
soul that 'a public ofilce is a public trust and
that he ought to stop short of hie duty for no
man or set of men. Very soon he discovered
evidences of corruption among the influential
'Honorables' who made up the city council, and it
had never occurred to the unsophisticated Mr.
Folk that a corrupt man should be free from
prosecution because of wealth or social position,
or the prefix 'Hon.' attached td his name. And
so the young Circuit Attorney continued his
'pernicious activity collecting evidence and mak
ing himself generally obnoxious to the bribe-takers
and bribe-givers of old St. Louis. No influence
could swerve him from what he thought to be
the line of duty, no threats moved him, no prom
ises allured. Corrupt Republicans and corrupt
Democrats shared alike. He went on with the
prosecution, calmly but with terrible earnestness.
The corruptionists who laughed at first either fled
the State or turned State's .evidence in the hope
of lightening their sentences. So the work has
gone on, and justice has been meted out to more
than one of the high and mighty. And never
should St. Louis forget its heroic young Circuit
Attorney. He has shown both courage and pa
triotism in a degree that has been surpassed by
no warrior in the world's history."
Mr. Folk's parents, it may be worth while to
say, were natives of Bertie County, N. C, and
two of his brothers are graduates of Wake Forest
College. His election as Governor is assured,
and many Republicans are demanding that their
party nominate no one in opposition to him.
Alexander Hamilton Again.
In connection with our comment on the centen
ary of the death of Alexander Hamilton last week,
we think it will interest the average reader to give
another paragraph as to the part played by the
famous financier in the making of this Govern
ment. It is decidedly singular, when one comes to
think of it, that so much of the policy of our
American republic has been shaped by a man who
frankly declared (June 26, 1787) : "I do npt
think favorably of republican government." "The
best form of government." he said, "is the British"
and the British system then was infinitely
less democratic than now. Hamilton's great ob
ject was to build up a strong centralized govern
ment. Perhaps the best brief outline of his pol
icy is given in the biography written by one of his
admirers, Charles A. Conant (Houghton, Mifflin
& Co., Publishers), and recently reviewed in The
Progressive Farmer :
"Hamilton advanced a doctrine which was eag
erly embraced by the party which was growing
up around him, but which was as resolutely op
posed by the other party. This was the doctrine
of the implied powers granted to the new govern
ment by the Constitution. It is doubtful whether
the Constitution would have been ratified by Vir
ginia and other States if this doctrine had been
set forth and defended in the State conventions
by the friends of the Constitution. This by no
means implies that the policy and doctrine of
Hamilton were not wise and far-sighted. Hamil
ton had definite aims before him, and it was his
legitimate mission to educate public sentiment up
to the point of accepting those aims and of grant
ing him the means for carrying them out. The
doctrine of the 'implied powers' rested upon the
theory that unless they were directly prohibited
by the Consitution, all powers were granted to the
government by implication which were found
necessary and proper for carrying out the powers
specifically granted. Jefferson came to believe, if
he did not believe at the outset, that the govern
ment was pne of delegated powers and strictly
limited to those enumerated in the Constitution.
The doctrine of Hamilton, from this point of
view, was revolutionary. It meant the conversion
of a government holding limited delegations of
power from the people and the States into a
government making supreme power, capable of
taking an infinite variety of measures whenever
Congress, in the exercise of its discretion, believed
that such measures would contribute to the well
being of the Union. The State governments,
coming closer to the people than the Federal
government, were most directly threatened by
this assumption of power, and it was as the cham
pions of State rights as well as democratic ideas
that Jefferson and his friends took their ground
as the advocates of the strict construction of the
Constitution."