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About The commoner. (Lincoln, Neb.) 1901-1923 | View Entire Issue (Sept. 21, 1906)
'""Wfl! T-tr,,r,, 'rifr T r w-"w-'f?93raj5rfv-,i; "'TTWieMpppriJI0 ' ww''v"tT',?im? T TiW'tWfFKe? The Commoner WILLIAM J. BRYAN, EDITOR AND PROPRIETOR Vol. .6. No. 36 Lincoln, Nebraska, September 21, 1906 Whole Number '296 t . CONTENTS ' Mb. Bryan's Letter 4. to commonkr $ubscbibebs Tub Issue in Maine ' - "And Without Resebye" - - - Income Tax in 1900 The Prksident and the Tabief Mb. Bbyan on Govebnment Ownebship The Dingley Schedules The Cuban Insubeection Comment on Cubbent Topics Home Depabtment Whetheb Common ob N ot News of the Week. KEEP IT BEFORE DEMOCRATS The democrats of Colorado in convention as-, sembled said: "We declare that there can be no alliance between the democratic party, or any por tion thereof, and tho.Be great corporations which attempt, hrough legislation, and through the executive and judicial branches' of ChV govern- ment, to exploit the people. Democracy stands for the masses against all class aggression." That states tha case in a nutshell, and to this end let democrats in every state remember that "no man who is officially connected with a cor poration that is seeking privileges ought to act as a member of a political organization, because he can not represent his corporation and the peo ple at the same time. He can not serve the public while he is seeking to promote the financial inter ests of the corporation with which he is con nected." JJJ SCARED? Following Is an extract from a St. Louis Globe-Democrat (Rep.) editorial: "Maine sound ed a warning for the republicans in its September election of 1880. Maine does the same service for the republicans in September, lj)06. A republican slump in the vote of Maine this week, like the "republican reverse in the same state twenty-six years ago, is a bugle call to arms, which the party must obey if it desires to maintain its supremacy in the national gov ernment." Getting scared, eh? JJ SUNBEAMS FROM CUCUMBERS Representative LIttlefield of Maine, whose majority in 1904 was approximately 5,500 and whose 1906 majority is less than 1,300, asserts that the opposition of the American Federation of Labor really helped him. If Representative LIttlefield really believes whaj he says he must be a lineal descendant of the gentleman described by Dean Swift as spending eight years in the task of trying to invent a method of extracting sunbeams from cucumbers. JJJ MIXED The St. Louis Globe-Democrat prints a Wash ington dispatch in which it is charged that but for Mr. Tirvan's Madison Snuare speech the dem- l ocrats would have elected the governor of Maine i by 20,000 majority, and would nave aeieaiea jtep- ' fesentative LIttlefield by a substantial margin. ; Yet republican editors tell us mat tne prona tion Question was resnonsible for the material Ireduction in the republican majority In Maine! . i . . " i , k2W- ir'i mm "I 'g'ipfcfcj-! -... i-- - - -, - IjlllBffi zjBP f-c2Sv Ufa vvWtfMaA<f C3fyiArv J4tMU7&ifaLfZrtluu Ut-t. tyLVuttly OnA. HriUfruhlMjMsL. UlMul. &t4 cUvuJUA Ai-afcih folfd 3mvw naAins X CW Ike. :.i "nvwgdfcfcH v " h. r-mm " "And Without Reserve" t . - r THE DVMA Mr. Bryan's Thirty-sixth Letter There Is at least one man in Russia who has reason to feel that his political judgment has been vindicated and his predictions verified by the assembling of the duma. It is Count Ignatieff, who, at the age of twenty-eight, framed the Pekin treaty and who, as minister of the Interior (the highest cabinet position at that time), in 1881 formulated a plan for a national assembly. His scheme was to have three thousand repre sentatives elected by the people, these represent atives, gathered from all parts of the empire, to meet at Moscow and confer with the emperor in person in regard to legislative measures. In order to avoid the objections raised to so large an as sembly, he proposed to divide the body Into groups of one hundred each, these groups to meet separately. He secured the approval of the em peror, but the other members of the cabinet were so strenuous in their opposition that the emperor decided not to attempt the reform and Count Ignatieff. resigned from the ministry. He warned them that a failure to recognize the demands of the people for representation In the government would simply delay the change and that It was better to yield before the demands became more radical, but the members of the bureaucracy, deaf to the appeals of the people and blind to their own interests, resisted and as a result a duma Is now in session at St. Petersburg and the bureaucracy finds itself an object of contempt and loathing, and the present emperor, like his predecessor, has to bear the sins of his advisers. I called upon Count Ignatieff and found him still vigorous in spite of his gray hairs and ad vancing years. I was interested In him not only because he is friendly toward our country and speaks our language fluently, but more especially because ho was a pioneer In a great movement and foresaw what many of the nobility oven now fall to recognize, viz., that there is no place where arbitrary power can justify Its existence. The tide of progress has swept past the count and he is now classed among the conservatives, but he deserves to be remembered because he had the courage to speak out when It required bravery to propose the taking of a step in the di rection of popular government. The duma is the result of the labors of hun dreds, yes, thousands of Russian reformers, a few conspicuous but the most of them unknown to fame, who for more'than seventy-five years have been Insisting upon constitutional government. It is one of the most remarkable bodies of men ever convened in a national capital, and I have been abundantly repaid for coming here. Th duma must be seen to be appreciated; even more, to understand it one must not only see the mem bers, but must know something of the struggle through which they have passed. I am satisfied that the czar himself Is more liberal than Jill advisers and that, left to himself, he would long ago have made concessions which would have brought the throne and the subjects nearer to gether, but he has yielded so slowly and given so grudgingly that the people have become very much estranged. To illustrate this I need only cite the facts. First, as to the election. St Petersburg and Moscow are the political centers where the officials and the nobility have the strongest representation, and yet In the elections the constitutional democrats won an overwhelm ing victory in both these cities. In St Petersburg the ticket Vhich represented the emperor receiyed only two thousand votes out of a total vote of sixty &-- .ittUM"& .Uw t 'MU f u-