6
VOLUME 9, NUMBER 46
CURR8N TROPICS
The Commoner;
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VIOLETS IN BLOOM on November 11! That
sounds strange, indeed, but the Chicago
Record-Herald is responsible for the following:
"Violets were in full bloom in the woods north
of Evanston yesterday November 11. And its
no 'nature fake..' School children of the suburb
are earning candy money by selling the flowers
at 16 cents a bunch. Old residents of Evanston
can not recall a time when wild violets could
bo picked so late in the season. C. B. Atwell,
city forester and professor of botany at North
western University, said he had never known
of the second bloom appearing later than Octo
ber. The woods where the violets are found in
the greatest number are just north of Centrale
street and between the lake and Sherman
avenue."
FORMER GOVERNOR Larrabee of Iowa went
to Washington and gave newspapers there
this interview: "We are beginning to miss
Roosevelt and wish he were back. President
Taft's indorsement of Aldrich's tariff views has
lost him much of his popularity out our way.
W.o all think ho made a big mistake. Colonel
Roosevelt is more popular today than he ever
was; people are beginning to miss him and his
rugged, thoroughly American and patriotic
views expressed on every subject concerning the
welfare of the country. If he were to land to
day at San Francisco and travel across the con
tinent to his Oyster Bay home he would receive
a reception, the like of which no American ever
experienced. He is bound to come to the front
again before many years,, and the country will
be the gainer. thereby."
'ry EFERRING TO the Larrabee interview, the
Xtu Washington correspondent for the Louis
ville dourler-Journal says: "In the meantime,
the president's attitude is said to be such that
ho would resent with righteous indignation a
suggestion by even his closest advisers that Mr.
Roosevelt is willing to obey a 'countrywide call,'
as the Rooseveltian boomers call it. Whatever
may be the result it is certain that President
Taft, in spite of his confidence in Roosevelt,
has many sleepless nights ahead of him. It is
embarrassing enough to have it constantly
pounded into a man of self-respect that he h,as
got to follow Roosevelt 'policies' to secure a re
nbmination. President Taft will be assured by
Mr. Roosevelt without solicitation that he is not
f a candidate and will not accept a nomination,
but just the same there will be a continual crop
ping out of little things that will not make for
the comfort of the executive."
THE NEW YORK Tribune, whose editor,
Whitelaw Reid, is about to bo retired from
the court of St. James because President Taft
is not particularly fond of him, prints a dispatch
from Washington giving details of "a far-reaching
and shrewdly organized movement which
has for its purpose the nomination of Theodore
Roosevelt in the national convention of 1912."
Referring to this dispatch the New York World
says: "There is such a movement. Mr. Taft's
friends have known about it for months. But
It Is not far-reaching and it is not shrewdly or
ganized. For the most part it is kindergarten
politics played by a small coterie of Mr. Roose
velt's intimate personal friends, abetted by a
handful of republican insurgents in the middle
vest. For weeks various western newspapers
have been' discussing the political possibilities
of a theatrical Roosevelt 'return from Elba,' as
It is frequently called. They have explained in
detail how, if he were to land in San Francisco
and cross the continent to New York, he 'would
burn up the country like a prairie Are,' and
nothing could prevent his renomination. All
the fair-haired boys of the Roosevelt adminis
tration whose vanity has been bumped since Mr.
Taft became president are yearning for the po
litical restoration of the great faunal naturalist.
The insurgents are naturally in favor of his can
didacy, because it gives them a weapon to use
against Mr. Taft and the administration. Mr.
Roosevelt 1b still very popular in the west, where
hlfl cowboy methods were regarded as the
supreme achievement of American statesmanship,
and there is no question about the fact that
the Roosevelt third-term movement is causing
some of Mr. Taft's friends a great deal of anx
iety. But there are a few obstacles to Mr.
Roosevelt's nomination in 1912, unless the Taft
administration sees fit to abdicate."
FOR ONE THING, according to the World, the
administration can control the southern
delegates to the republican 'national convention.
The World adds! "Thirteen southern states
have 282 of the 992 delegates. The eastern
states are not clamoring for four years more of
Roosevelt. , They have already had enough.
Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachu
setts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York,
New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Delaware will
have 252 delegates in the next national conven
tion. Combined with the southern delegates
here is a total of 534, or considerably more than
a majority, and the forty-six delegates from Mr.
Taft's own state can be thrown in for good
measure. Once upon a time a far more popular
man than Theodore Roosevelt returned from a
journey around the world. The republican or
ganization was more demoralized than it is now,
and the administration had a weaker hold upon
the country. But all of Grant's popularity plus
Roscoe Conkling's genius could not break down
the barrier against a third term. Mr. Taft is
stronger than he was at the time of his inaugu
ration and is likely to grow in strength. To
be sure, it Mr. Roosevelt decided to be an open
candidate for the nomination In 1912 against
Mr. Taft he could split tle republican party and
add much to the gayety of nations. But we
doubt if Mr. Taft Is greatly worried or if he is
seriously disturbed by pictures of the 'return
from Elba.' Possibly the president remembers
that it was only a hundred days from Elba to
Waterloo."
GOVERNOR BURKE of North Dakota gave
the politicians quite a surprise when he
appointed Fountain H. Thompson of Cando as
United States senator to Bucceed the late Martin
M. Johnson. A Bismarck dispatch to the Chi
cago Record-Herald says: "The appointment of
Mr. Thompson was announced from the gov
ernor's office at a little after 5 o'clock this after
noon. The announcement of Thompson's ap
pointment followed one of the busiest confer
ences that has been held among the leading dem
ocrats of the state during the three weeks in
which the senatorship has been in the balance.
The announcement came, it may be said, as a
surprise to the greater number of the democrats
who were in the city, and it is likely it will
be as equally a great surprise to the democrats
of the state. Thompson has not been reckoned
as among the leaders of the North Dakota demo
crats, his activities having been largely confined
to Towner county, where ho has been a member
of the board of township supervisors and county
judge. He is a close personal friend of the gov
ernor, and it is said that he was turned to
as an appointee after it was seen that the demo
cratic leaders of tho state were hopelessly di
vided as to a choice for the senatorship. Few
of the democratic leaders in the city but were
surprised at the appointment, from the fact that
Thompson was not looked upon "as a possible
appointee, and 'his claims had been urged only
within a day or so by a. delegation from Towner
county."
IN HIS NEWSPAPER, "The Issue," Former
Governor Vardaman discusses the claim that
"Mr. Taft Is close to the southern people." Gov
ernor Vardaman says: "Let us see how close
Mr. Taft is to tho southern people what he
stands for, that they are interested In. He is tho
embodiment of the Payne-Aldrich bill, which is
the most iniquitous of all robber tariffs. He
stands for ship-subsidy which is a steal pure and
simple. Grand larceny by law. He stands for
a central bank of issue, which will put the con
trolof the money supply of the nation in the
.hands of a few great financiers who would
scuttle tho ship of state and outrage the Goddess
of Liberty, coin the tears and blood of tho toil
ing people into dollars, or damn their immortal
souls for profit He stands for a great army
and a great navy, which increases tho burden of
taxation, now so heavily borne by the farmers
and laborers of this republic. He stands for
social and political equality between tho whito
people and the negroes, which means the de
struction of the white man's civilization in the
south, and the contamination of Caucasian blood.
If Mr. Taft's views on the race problem should
be carried out, the white people would ultimately
be forced to leave the south. He stands for
imperialism which is violative of the genius of
our government. He stands for usurpation of
power by tho federal judioiary. In other words,
he is the incarnation of the extreme infamies of
the republican party vgilded with an innocent
. smile. If Mr. Taft 'is close to the people of the
south,' he is only close to them' to corrupt the
integrity of the white race, to plunder by law
the people who toil, that the few pets of the
republican-party may grow richer still. To do
everything against their interest and nothing
for their , interest, is what he stands for in
politics. About the only thing ho is willing to
give the southern people is the sunlight of his
trade-mark smile and a few hot air compliments.
And with all that, I think Taft is a much better
man politically, much truer to his convictions,
and closer to the southern people, than Dickin
son. Taft is what he pretends to be. Dickinson
is as much of a republican as Taft, and pretends
to be a democrat. I prefer the genuine articlo
to the gilded counterfeit."
ONE VIEW-of Ferrer is given in an editorial
by the Chicago Inter Ocean as follows:!
"Tho world-wide agitation over the- career and
end of Francisco Ferrer, the Spanish anarchist,
must rank as one of the most curious modern
illustrations of self-delusion. It would not be
correct to call it popular delusion, since its
victims were commonly persons who passed as
educated and well informed. In France the in
cident was, of course, seized upon by socialist,
anarchist and anti-church agitators as campaign
material. In Paris it produced a riot in which
one policeman was killed, a dozen wounded and
from which the prefect of police narrowly es
caped with his life. In England the chief vic
tims of the delusion about Ferrer seem to havo
been the evangelical nonconformists. Tho Liver
pool body of these persons passed resolutions
condemning Ferrer's execution as 'a judicial
murder,' and condoling with his 'wife and
children.' When these worthy persons learn
that Ferrer's wife found cause to leave him
years ago, and that the woman with him in
Spain was not his wife, their embarrassment may,
be imagined. In the United States the immedi
ate victims were pur 'sociologists' and tho great
numbers of well-intentioned people whose wil
lingness to be guided by noise and names causes
them to echo any sentiment expressed in the
name of 'humanity.' But who was Ferrer, and
what had he done to make him worthy, even for
a moment, of tho outpourings of sympathy that
were given to his fate in this and other coun
tries? A Paris correspondent of the New York
Evening Post answers these questions from the
record: Francisco Ferrer was self-educated,
which was to his credit as a man, but which
fact makes intelligent, people distrustful of him
as a far-reaching thinker. His first public ap
pearance was about twenty years ago as a teach
er of Spanish in Paris. He had a wife and two
little daughters. His wife found cause to leave
him, taking the children with her, and they have
been brought up without his help. One of them
Is a widowed working woman, with two little
children. Th.e other is an actress. About the
time his wife left him Ferrer became intimate
with an unmarried French woman of fortune,
who in her death left him'. $150,000. Her
executor and the notary who drew her win
state that the object of the bequest was to found
an orphanage In -Barcelona, but that tho testa
tor not having expressed this intention in her
will, but only in private letters to Ferrer,
was not possible to prosecute the ler ioT
breach of trust in using the money to subsidize
anarchist schools and to circulate anarchist lit"
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