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The Commoner
WILLIAM J. BRYAN, EDITOR AND PROPRIETOR
Vol. .6. No. 36
Lincoln, Nebraska, September 21, 1906
Whole Number '296
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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!
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"And Without Reserve"
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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
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