TALKING OF MEN AND THINGS
"Harmon and Harmony'' is reputed to
be the watchword of the democracy of
Douglas county. "Harmony, hell!"
would be nearer the truth. Will Maupin's
Weekly is not, as a newspaper, interested
particularly in the controversy that has
arisen between Kichard L. Metcalfe and
Hon. Mike Harrington. Possibly Mr.
Metcalfe was unwise in his Bryan ban
quet speech; certainly Mr. Harrington
was unwise in stirring up that con
troversy at this time. Doubtless after
reading Mr. Metcalfe's rejoinder to "his
voluminous open letter Mr. Harrington
fully realizes the unwisdom of his act.
candidates down the throats of the peo
ple. '
- As a matter of fact, neither Mr. Met
calfe's speech at the Bryan banquet, nor
Mr. Harrington's letter cut much figure
insofar as the present situation in dem
ocratic party circles is concerned. The
trouble goes back further than that. It
had its inception in the criminal foolish
ness of a coterie of Omaha politicians in
shoving Dahlman into the gubernatorial
race a criminal bit of foolishness that
was intensified by Dahlman himself.
Some there may be who will say that Mr.
Bryan started the trouble when he came
out for county option. That is not true,
although this newspaper holds now, as
its editor held then, that the injection of
county option into the political arena
was unwise. I Jut county option had be
come acute before Mr. Dryan spoke, and
Dahlman had already announced his can
didacy on an anti-option platform.
He who imagines for a moment that
any party in Nebraska can elect candi
dates notoriously and openly in favor of
practically unbridled license; who are
known beyond all question to be backed
by the interests that backed Dahlman
any man who imagines that such candi
dates can be elected to state office in
Nebraska could submit his head to an
augur without anything but boneshav
ings showing up as a result of the opera
tion. Dahlman had no more chance of
being elected than hell has of becoming a
cold storage warehouse. Had he been op
posed by Cady of St. Paul or Mockett of
Lancaster, or Evans of Adams or some
other republican of equally good record
his defeat would have been far worse
than it was, and heaven knows it was hu
miliating enough. The plain truth is
that Aldrich was elected despite the fact
that his candidacy did not appeal to pro
testing democrats or old line republicans.
Sliallenberger would have defeated Aid
rich hands down.
As before mentioned, this unfortunate
plight of the democracy of Nebraska is
not due to Mr. Bryan's action, nor to
Metcalfe's Dryan banquet speech. It is
the direct result of the efforts of the most
disreputable elements in Nebraska poli
tics to cram their principles and their
The idea of Douglas county democrats
denouncing Bryan as a traitor while en
dorsing Harmon of Ohio! It is to laugh.
Harmon, the man who bolted Bryan in
1896 and 1900, and gave him paltering
support in 1908 only because Harmon
had a politcal bee and imagined that by
being "regular" he could make up for his
desertion in former' Bryan campaigns !
And scores of the delegates themselves
bolters in 1896 ! -Arid Dahlman talking
about bolters when he himself openly and
notoriously bolted the Grand Island plat
form and ran. upon a platform of his own
making a platform so rotten and offen
sive that it was repudiated overwhelmingly.
The trouble with democracy is that it
saves up its fool mistakes for the purpose
of committing them at the time when
they will do it the most' harm. Just at
the moment when it is possible for de
mocracy to grasp success, up jumps a lot
of plain, unornamented democratic jack
asses to kick the whole business into
smithereens. The mere fact that the dem
ocrats of Douglas county denounced
Dryan is enough to make the rank and
file of demoracy outside of that county
get closer to him. Let this great ti nth
percolate through democratic skulls if it
can: It may not be possible to elect a
democratic president with Bryan's
hearty support; it will be impossible to
elect a democratic president in the face
of Bryan's Opposition.
Is a Nebraska man's democracy to be
measured by the test of whether or not
he voted for Dahlman? If so, why not
measure an Ohio man's democracy by the
test of whether or not he supported
Bryan in that marvelous campaig n of
1896. There are 30,000 democrats in Ne
braska who can not stand the test ; and
by the same token Judson Harmon of
Ohio will measure short.
Why all this rumpus about that
"ditched" Metcalfe resolution? Sliallen
berger did not ditch it. Harrington had
it during all the hours the resolutions
committee of the Grand Island conven
tion was in session. The man primarily
responsible for side-tracking that resolu
tion is United States Senator Gilbert M.
Hitchcock. It was the Hitchcock resolu
tion, which bound and. gagged the con
vention, that prevented anything but
what the resolutions committee reported
from coming before the convention. The
resolutions committee refused to let
Bryan submit the Metcalfe proposition
as an alternative minority report, and
Mr. Bryari naturally cho.se his own reso
lution in preference tq Metcalfe's.
Neither eyen had a. ehanqe of being adopt
ed no more chance than Dahlman ever
had of being elected governor in 1910.
It is true Governor Sliallenberger
failed to deliver Metcalfe's resolution to
Babcock, and doubtless true that he told
Metcalfe to the contrary. That is easily
explained. Governor Sliallenberger was
pretty busy and failed to see Babcock in
time, but did give the resolution to an
other member of the committee with a
hurried request that it be handed to Bab
cock. But the resolution was discussed
in committee, and it was throttled by the
Hitchcock resolution.
This Harrington-Metcalfe exchange of
epistolary pleasantries reminds us of a
story, A Tennessee man emerged from
a saloon and throwing his hat in the air
whooped that he could whip any man in
town. No one paid the slightest atten
tion. Then he danced a jig and declared
he could whip any many jn the county.
Still no attention. He then declared he
could whip any man in the state, and got
no response. Then he swore loudly that
he could whip any blankety blank son of
blankety blank in the United States, and
a man smote him on the jaw and knocked
him across the street. When the man
arose and wiped the blood from his face
he remarked: "The trouble with me is
that I took in too much territory the last .
time." The man who goes up against
"Dick" Metcalfe in a newspaper con
troversy is taking in too much territory
a fact that Mr. Harrington is doubt
less cogitating at this moment.
But isn't all this fuss and fury over a
question that has no part in politics
"nuts" for the republicans? It means the
election of three republican supreme
judges this fall and the entire republican
state ticket in 1912. It means that Ne
braska is as sure to give its electoral vote
to Taft in 1912 as water is to flow down
hill when let loose. And it means the
election of a republican United States
senator. And all because a lot of men
who can differ on questions of demo
cratic policy lose their heads and act like
a lot of schoolboys when the everlasting
and damnably foolish whisky question
comes up.
Two things should be made clear to the
minds of democrats : One is that all at
tempts to make a Sunday school organi
zation of the party are foredoomed to ig
nominious failure. The other is that all
attempts to shackle the party to a brew
ery and a distillery will result in failure
equally disastrous. If democrats can
forget this liquor question, which is not
a political question but a moral one hav
ing nq place in politics, and fight it out
on the lines of genuine tariff reform it
pan wjii5 Tlie chances are that they wilj
