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W E E K L Y JOURNAL OF CHEERFUL COMMENT
Volume 8
LINCOLN, NEBRASKA, AUGUST 18, 1911
Number 22
COMMENT ON TIMELY TOPICS
In view of President Taft's whole ex
perience it is not strange that he does
not take kindly to the judicial recall.
Neither is it strange that he fails to
grasp the meaning of the new order of
things. Until elected to the presidency
William II. Taft had never held elective
office, though many years the holder of
public office. His whole public life until
three years ago was spent in a sort of
hedged in divinity that kept him apart
from and in ignorance of the desires and
growing hopes of the people. His criti
cism of the judicial recall that it makes
the judiciary liable to become the victims
of popular clamor is peculiarly Taftian,
in that he does not seem to realize that
these same judges may have been elected
through exactly that sort of thing, there
fore unfitted for the office. His disap
proval of the Arizona-New Mexico state
hood bill will serve no good purpose.
On the contrary it will arouse greate
popular resentment against what has
come to be deemed the ursurpation of
power by the judiciary. It merely means
the postponement of statehood for a cou
ple of years. Then Arizona may present
a constitution with the prescribed clause
stricken, out, and immediately after se
curing statehood the citizens of Arizona
may adopt the judicial recall and wiggle
their fingers at the executive of the nation.
In exercising the veto on the statehood
bill President Taft merely exhibits his
lack of confidence in the wisdom and in
tegrity of the whole people. He is of that
once strong, but happily disappearing,
school of statesmen that believes that an
educated minority should be allowed" to
govern a less educated majority; that
holds to the Hamiltonian doctrine that
the people need a strong, repressive hand
to protect them from themselves. This is
characteristic of the men trained in the
school from which- William H. Taft has
graduated. It is of this school of men
that Lincoln said "bestrode the necks of
the people, not because they wanted to
ride them, but because the people were
better off for being ridden." It is the doc
trine of kingcraft- a doctrine that Wil
liam II. Taft clung to so tenaciously in
his administration of the Philippine isl
ands, and which he now seeks to more
securely fasten upon the people of the
republic.
Mr. Bryan has put it up to the World
Herald. His recent strictures upon Mr.
Underwood were founded upon a special
Washington dispatch to the World
Herald, sent by that paper's representa
tive, Judd Welliver. "If your special
dispatch is correct, then . I have nothing
to retract," says Mr. Bryan. "If it is not
correct, then I am ready to apologize and
withdraw my charges against Mr. Under
wood." Just now we are much more in
terested in the corn crop than we are
in the outcome of the Bryan-Underwood
imbroglio, but just the same- we would
like to have the esteemed World-Herald
come across with its answer.
Governor Harmon may well worry
over the attitude of Mr. Bryan. It is
one of the humors of politics that the
men loudest in denouncing Bryan for
having bolted Dahlman last fall are fore
most in boosting Harmon, the man who
twice bolted Bryan and on the third oc
casion gave him grudging support.
And just as Governor Harmon may
well worry over Mr. Bryan's attitude, so
may William H. Taft worry over the atti
tude of La Follette. Not always has the
"federal brigade" been able to deliver
either a re-nomination or a re-election. In
the case of Chester A. Arthur one of the
best oiled federal machines ever set to
running could not deliver the goods. And
while the federal brigade delivered a re
nomination for Benjamin. Harrison, it
failed miserably when it came to a re
election. It must be conceded that Pres
ident Taft has grown greatly in the esti
mation of thoughtful and fair-minded
people, but it must also be admitted that
at the same time he has alienated the
support of many former admirers. He
has offended many by his advocacy of
reciprocity, stjll others by his bourbon at
titude towards the growing demand for
the judicial recall, and still others and
the most powerful of all the tariff
beneficiaries who see in his reciprocity
measure a threat against the perpetuity
of the robber tariff. Clearly Mr. Taft, as
well as Mr. Harmon, have their political
worries these days.
Of course Governor Aldrich spoke in
humorous vein at the Epworth assem-
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