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some of the Rooseveltians had no doubt persuaded themselves that their leader was actuated by something better than greed for office and power, the battle was so obviously a personal one -accompanied by so much hitting below the belt and such an odious display of vulgarity and self-advertisementthat it could not make any appeal to the higher instincts of the nation. real question of the day in the United States is the cost of living, and the real contest is the contest between Protection and Free-trade, or between the protected Trusts and the suffering consumers. The nomination and election of Judge Parker as Chairman elicited a strong protest from Mr. Bryan against reactionary policies, and Mr. Roosevelt's busy friends in the Press contrived to spread a rumor that Mr. Bryan would bolt like Mr. Roosevelt, and would eventually co-operate with him in the formation of a new Progressive party. The wish, no doubt, was father to the thought. But the atmosphere of Baltimore was utterly different from the atmosphere of Chicago, and Mr. Bryan, with all his faults, has a certain simple loyalty to both principle and party which has not been consumed in the devouring flames of a personal vanity. Judge Parker and all the leaders at Baltimore soon showed that they meant to work for conciliation, and the spirit of the Convention was the spirit of a party long out of office, animated by a confident hope of victory, with an honest policy

The Economist.

for reducing the cost of living, and a general resolve to unite upon a champion who would bring that policy about. By electing Senator James to preside over the National Democratic Committee the leaders of the Convention put an end to the difficulties created by the nomination of Judge Parker. The Senator's speech was by all accounts a tremendous success. He contrasted the distracted and divided state of the Republican party with the unity and harmony of the Democrats. The Republicans by their action had confessed the failure of the President, and had exposed his unfaithfulness to the cause of the masses. The abominations of the tariff were the keynote of this speech, and the cry of a tariff for revenue only, with enormous reductions all round, will be the battlecry of the Democratic party in the election campaign. The tax upon woollen goods was picked out by Senator James as the most indefensible of all the taxes, and it looks as if President Taft's action in refusing to sign the Bill passed by Congress for the reduction of the woollen tariff will prove (as we thought it would at the time) the most disastrous of all his mistakes. The correspondent of the Daily Telegraph states, after conversation with leading Democrat officials, that the party will make its fight before the country on a tariff for revenue only and will thus conciliate the masses, who hope by tariff legislation to secure a reduction in the cost of living.

PARTY PROSPECTS IN AMERICA.

Mr. Roosevelt has bolted, but how mately be fixed. With all his im

far will he run? or, rather, how far will he induce his followers to go? As his insatiable egoism knows no limits, it is impossible to anticipate where the bounds of his secession may ulti

petuosity, "the Colonel" is as "slim" as all the Bosses put together, and we may be sure that he will go in the direction where he believes popular support awaits him. When we remem

ber the strictness of party ties in the United States, it is strange that he should have received as many votes as he did; still the Roosevelt legend has sustained a rude shock. The defeat in the Convention may be like O'Connell's check at Clontarf, and the reputation of this master of mobs may never recover. At all events, party discipline proves to be a much tougher bond than was imagined. More than one hundred and thirty of the pledged Roosevelt delegates at the Convention refused to obey his orders. This shows that though Mr. Roosevelt may break up his party he will not rush the majority along the road he marks out. He may give the Presidency to the Democrats, but he will not carry it for himself with Republican votes. There is a story current in America, and told here, we believe, by Mr. Smalley, too apposite to omit. "Father," said Mr. Roosevelt's "must always be in it. When he is at a wedding he wants to be the bride, when he is at a funeral he wants to be the corpse." At the funeral of the Republican régime he bids fair to provide the pièce de résistance.

son,

Not long ago in this Review an excellent book by Mr. Maurice Low was noticed, in which the writer pointed out the dangerous tendency to defiance of the law patent throughout the United States. Mr. Roosevelt is typically American in setting up as a law to himself. When anyone else is in authority he is impatient till he takes his place. No doubt he genuinely believes that he alone can save his party and his country, but to the ordinary man he appears to have violated all the traditions of friendship and decorum. It would indeed be impossible to imagine, even in an age of grotesque selfadvertisement, anything more disgusting than the corybantic ravings of this ex-Chief Magistrate of a great State during the last month. We wonder

what the European potentates and statesmen who bowed down before this super-advertiser think of it all! They worshipped him because they thought he represented the American people, but he does not even represent the Republican party. He was taken for Cæsar, but he turns out to be at the best nothing but a Cleon manqué. The world, even though so ready to take the pushful at their own value, is beginning to ask what substance there was in all the verbosity of those interminable harangues. One thing is clear-that when in office the Reformer was ready enough to accept the help of the Bosses and their organizations when he desired a victory at the polls.

Whatever line the Democrats may take up, in Mr. Roosevelt's programme we find Radicalism enough and a grave threat to the stability of the Constitution. The principal items appear to be women's suffrage, the direct election of Senators, the restoration to the people of control over the Government, now fallen into the hands of a minority (whatever that may mean), the choice of Presidential candidates by direct primary elections, and the "recall" of judges and their decisions. There is also to be a reform of the tariff at the hands of an expert Commission. This last item is studiously vague. If the American people accepts this programme or anything like it, and puts Mr. Roosevelt at the White House to carry it through, the American Constitution, as we have understood it, will disappear, and in its place we shall have a plebiscitary Cæsarism. This would be entirely in accordance with Mr. Roosevelt's manner of comporting himself when in power. His talk was habitually of "my policy, my ministers," and so on. And this undoubtedly impressed European opinion till it believed that Mr. Roosevelt really was America. His avowed policy of fur

ther curtailing States' rights and exalting the judicial power all tends in the same direction.

But does the man of American opinion really desire this evolution and the complete break-up of parties? We doubt it altogether, and anticipate a Democratic victory, unless there should be some gross blunder in tactics. But the important question for the rest of the world is, What will be the attitude of a Democratic President to the problems of policy which concern the world and not merely America? The answer must be purely speculative at present, for it is fifteen years since a Democratic President held the reins, but the Democratic party have throughout shown themselves to be anti-imperialist. They disliked the acquisition of the Philippines, and probably very few people in the United States at the present time are really glad that the islands were acquired, or take much pride in their possession. This question may solve itself before long for the United States may find an opportunity of ridding themselves for value received of a dependency which they value little and have made no great success in governing. As to Cuba, it would hardly be possible for the least Jingo of Presidents to ease himself of that burden. It is too near to the Panama Canal route. But to the whole McKinley foreign policy, of which Cuba and Porto Rico are the concrete expression, Mr. Bryan and his friends were, and we suppose are, resolutely opposed. It is not possible to anticipate any modification in the policy of fortifying the Panama Canal, approved and prosecuted by President Taft. It is true that we tacitly abandoned our opposition by the HayPauncefote Treaty. But the proposed preferential treatment of American vessels is a clear violation of treaty provisions. We can hardly, however, The Saturday Review.

expect the Democrats to become purists in international morality when its violation would prove so profitable. Neither Mr. Bryan nor any other Democratic President would be so oblivious of his own interests or the prospects of a Second Term as to rouse national feeling against himself and his party by neglecting any question in which national honor or interest was imagined to be specially involved. The Panama Canal is one of these questions, the Monroe Doctrine is another, Japanese immigration is a third. We do not think that the Democrats would modify in such matters the policy of the Republicans. Nor is policy towards this country likely to change. We have never affected to believe that Republicans were swayed by sentiment in their dealings with us; no more would be the Democrats. Under either the German and the Irish vote have to be manipulated, and the incident of President Cleveland and Venezuela is difficult to forget.

The big-stick so blatantly brandished by the ex-President will hardly be found in the hands of any Democrat, and we doubt if he would prove the author of another Panama-Columbia coup. But the most important question for England is, Will a Democratic President continue a series of great shipbuilding programmes ? Such a policy would be entirely contrary to Democratic tradition, nor would it tend towards tariff reduction, which is the one unalterable item of a Democratic platform. A Democratic President, however much his principles might require it, will hardly resist the pressure of opinion in the direction of national self-assertion. The isolation of the United States in international questions is gone, and in this matter Democrats cannot differ much from Republicans, though expenditure on armaments may be reduced.

DR. WOODROW WILSON'S TASK.

The expected has happened at the Democratic Convention at Baltimore. The secession of insurgent Republicans at Chicago under Mr. Roosevelt made the nomination of a Radical Democrat a matter of plain party necessity. After a prolonged measurement of forces, Dr. Woodrow Wilson was chosen. Though less widely known throughout the country than Mr. Bryan, he enjoys many advantages. In the first place, he has risen rapidly to fame, and leaves no record of political failure and discarded projects behind him. His brilliant reputation as a scholar and the ex-President of a leading University, though serving to recommend him to cultured Americans, is of dubious electioneering value. The "plain people" in America have always been shy of the occasional intrusions of men of academic distinction into practical politics. Though college presidents are in great request as intellectual consultants on all sorts of public occasions, they have generally been regarded as "kidglove politicians," unfit for the rough and tumble of hard practical affairs. Since quitting Princeton for the Governorship of New Jersey, Dr. Wilson, however, has shown himself made of stuff which even the most professional of machine politicians have learned to respect. He has made his mark for sagacity and force of character by crushing and outwitting the corruptest gang of bosses and boodlers in a State which enjoys the most unsavory reputation in the Union. Of his personal platform upon federal politics, little detailed knowledge is abroad. Though recognized as belonging to the Radical wing, he has never committed himself to the wilder proposals upon finance and railroads which have formed the staple of Mr. Bryan's oratory, and is therefore more likely to retain the un

broken allegiance of the party for the three-cornered fight, which ought, upon the present setting of the chances, to lead him to victory next November.

On issues of constitutional reform, which Mr. Roosevelt has so far thrust into the forefront of his campaign, Dr. Wilson has hitherto expressed himself with moderation. His advocacy of such measures as the referendum and initiative and the recall has been far more discriminating than Mr. Roosevelt's. It seems tolerably clear that now that the game is set out, the latter will force the running upon lines of bolder Radical doctrine than any yet indicated. For no success can seem possible for him unless he can detach from the democratic camp large sections of voters for whom the "radicalism" of Dr. Wilson is too tame. His personal following among Republicans is doubtless far stronger than Mr. Taft's in the West and Mid-West, and he may take over the regular Republican machine in some of these States. But his only real chance lies in welding into a temporary union all the forces of social discontent by persuading them that he is the political Messiah they have so long been waiting for the heaven-sent leader who shall restore to the people the powers of government which the politicians and their paymasters have stolen from them, and which they now most urgently require for the salvation of the commonwealth. He must angle for the confidence of the large numbers of Labor men and Socialists and disillusioned Democrats, who were able eighteen years ago to muster a voting force of nearly two millions under the title of a People's Party. These ultraradicals he must drive in the same team with the timid respectables who form citizen leagues, and the essentially con

servative farmers who have stood firmly round him since his rough-rider days. To this difficult task Mr. Roosevelt brings unbounded self-confidence and the enthusiasm this engenders, a genius for sounding moral platitudes and for dramatic tactics. But these qualifications of a preliminary campaign will not suffice to secure for him success next November. Unless he can devise a bolder policy for dealing with the concrete problems which underlie the seething discontent of the American workers than he has yet disclosed, he cannot pit his new Progressive Party against the regular machines with any prospect of victory. A mere appeal against the corrupt tyranny of machines and bosses will never succeed, for his new party will speedily degenerate into a new machine, and he has all the instincts and talents of a boss. At the roots of American discontent lie the Trusts, the Railways, the Money Power, and the Tariff, four interrelated sources of tyranny and plunder. Mr. Roosevelt's only chance is to develop so drastic a federal policy for dealing with these grievances as to place, not only Mr. Taft, but Dr. Wilson, in the category of Conservatives.

Whether he is prepared for such a revolutionary design remains to be seen. The Democratic Platform, as formulated at Baltimore, is conservative enough, throwing its main stress upon a Tariff for revenue, and dealing with trusts and monetary reform in terms of studied vagueness. But, as the fight proceeds, Dr. Wilson will, of course, develop his own proposals. The real difficulty of Radical Democracy lies in the sentiments and traditions of State rights which still cling round the party. Though even Conservative Democrats, like Mr. Cleveland, make large concessions to the centralizing

The Nation.

forces of national life, any proposal to cede to the Federal authority concrete powers of legislation, administration, or taxation hitherto wielded by the several States is liable to arouse strong opposition. Yet some encroachments on State rights, some positive enlargements of Federal power, are indispensable to a really radical process of reform. The power of Trusts cannot be curbed or broken so long as they can crouch behind the protecting ægis of State Charters. The nationalization of Railways, the policy which must soon emerge from the half-way house of Federal control, is impracticable without a cession of existing State powers. A drastic and effectual handling of currency and banking, so as to give substance to the misnomer of a National Bank, and to protect the currency and credit of the country from the risks and shocks of warring or combining groups of financiers, demands a strongly centralized control from Washington. Finally, Tariff for Revenue will never secure for the American people the advantages of free imports, or rid them of the tariff-bred monopolies, until a Federal policy of direct taxation is constitutionally feasible, so as to yield the growing National Revenue that is needed. If Dr. Wilson desires to make the Democratic Party the instrument of a national policy which shall place the United States in the front of political civilization, instead of in the rear, he must rally the solid party, including the hitherto Conservative South, round a programme which will jettison the orthodox Democratic conceptions of State rights. is the manifest strategy for Mr. Roosevelt to force this supreme test of Radicalism upon the Democratic nominee, and if his Progressive Party means business, we may look for roof-lifting proposals at its August Convention.

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