Various

“ The triumph of Judge Dunne, the Democrat, following so speedily upon the heels of an adverse vote against Judge Parker, the Democrat, absolutely clinches the truth of what I said, namely, that the only party, the only principle, the only sentiment which grew stronger by the campaign of 1904 was that of radicalism.
Why shouldn’t the lesson of the Chicago election be taken to heart by every great city and every small town in this Republic? If the people of Chicago can turn the rascals out, the people of New York can turn the rascals out, the people of Philadelphia can turn the rascals out. ”

“ The whole plan is an attempt to compromise me, to force my consent.”
Into what a scheme had I been betrayed! The sweat rose to my forehead.
“Mademoiselle,” I cried, “for God’s sake acquit me of any such dishonor!”
“I do, Monsieur, freely.”
“I shall go back to du Trémigon and explain my appearance to him immediately. I shall compel him to give me satisfaction for this insult—an insult to you as well as to me. Your quarrel with him shall be mine. He will trouble you no more,” I added significantly.
“Your plan is vain, Monsieur. I know the Marquis du Trémigon. ”

“ Populism recognizes the fact that we must work with the world as it is now—and not as some Utopian dreamer conceives it ought to be. It recognizes the fact that private ownership of productive property is not only the rule all over the world—but also that the people like it. It recognizes the Socialists’ “economic determinism”—that man’s economic needs usually dominate when they clash with his ideals—yet is not unmindful of the fact that all progress is the result of ideals forcing a change in the environment. ”

“ The spirit of Populism has reasserted itself and taken the Sunflower State by storm.
The shots fired by the Kansas Legislature, forced from it by a determined demand of the people, at the trusts and monopolies have been heard around the world. They sounded the death-knell of plutocracy in America.
Aimed at the Standard Oil octopus, these shots hit every political and commercial scoundrel in the United States. The special privileged class have been dealt a blow which staggers their fabric from centre to circumference. ”

“ Life has many of these jesters whose motley serves but poorly to hide from others, and not at all from themselves, the fact that this fool is as wise as some whom he could mention and whom it is the delight of his soul to play with as he chooses. Between him and the clever woman who was now standing on the terrace at Drayton Hall there had always been kept up a particularly active warfare, for Mrs. March was the one woman in London who did not fear him, and, while this nettled him and sometimes seriously annoyed him, it fascinated and led him on. ”

“ If this control is to stand, if millions of people are to slave for a few thousand, it is necessary that the many have no direct hand in their own government, that the many delegate to representatives their power, and that such representatives should be influenced so as to become the representatives of the few. The people must have only the semblance of power, the representatives the real power, in order that governing may be carried on for the advantage of the rulers, not of the ruled. ”

“ And then when the child has been actually sacrificed, when by the simple act of releasing their hold upon it and turning away they have actually allowed it to pass out from their love and tenderness into the world unknown, this silent cradle has seen them smite their hands in anguish and yield to such voiceless tempests of grief as only those know who have loved much and lost all. ”

“ Therefore the principle of public ownership of public utilities cannot be classed as Democratic, if we use the term in the partisan sense which attaches to it. The principle of public ownership is Populistic, and it is merely rendering to the pioneers of that movement simple justice when we say that the Chicago election, which wiped out party lines and gave to the people and to the principle a magnificent victory, should redound to the credit of those much-abused and misrepresented men who thirteen years ago unfurled that particular flag and began to fight beneath it. ”

“ The wise thing to do is to attack boldly the unfair provisions of the Constitution, and attack it with a fair weapon fashioned by the Constitution. Such a campaign possesses all the elements of strength and strategy. You are safe from the attacks of those who ever hide behind the alleged sanctity of that document. You can turn their own weapons against them. You are standing on the Constitution. You are following to the letter the advice and wishes of Washington and others of his day. ”

“ Populism asks that these great evils be corrected—and that the individual be allowed to conduct his own private business with the least possible interference by government. There will always be work for the reformer; but wisdom dictates that the greatest evils be first eliminated, so that many of a minor character may be allowed to correct themselves.
To Roosevelt
OUR hero is a man of peace, Preparedness he implores, His sword within its scabbard sleeps, But, mercy! ”

“ Thomas Lawson has been arousing the public to a sense of the dangers of the Financiers’ System, the System by which the banks, the insurance companies, the trusts and the Stock Exchange are employed by so-called Captains of Industry to despoil the people. After explaining how the game is conducted, he shows that even those who refrain from gambling on the Stock Exchange, and who may have no financial transactions beyond keeping a bank account or insuring their lives, are drawn into it, against their knowledge and will, and robbed of all the fruits of their labor and abstinence. ”

“ Unless the Constitution be entirely repealed, there is no way by amendment to deprive any state of its equal representation in the Senate. It is too much to expect that all of the corrupt boroughs which now hold the undeserved dignity of statehood will relinquish the selfish advantage bequeathed them by the unwisdom of the forefathers, but it is possible to make amendments to the Constitution which will reduce the Senate of the United States to a state of harmless inefficiency. ”

“ Populism recognizes that man is a social animal, yet combats Socialism for subordinating the individual to the collectivity, and combats anarchy for subordinating the collectivity to the individual. It is the golden mean between these extremes.
Although Populism lays no claim to being either a “science” or a “philosophy,” yet it has the only definite program of any party today before the American people. ”

“ And ordinary criminals have a better right to make that plea in palliation for their crime than the trusts and corporations have. If, as they admit, the railroad managers are so dishonest that one must violate the law because another does, if there is no way to restrain them except to turn the whole matter over to them, and permit them to pool their earnings so that one thief can watch the other thieves, it is about time to abolish the whole system of private ownership and for the Government to take charge of the lines of transportation. ”

“ THE men who builded the Constitution were consumed by no senseless adulation of their own handicraft. They were not possessed of the delusion that they were inspired, neither did they dream that future generations would search the record of their quarrels and selfish compromises for the key which would enable them to solve problems as they arose. They planned a document for the regulation of a people whom they believed unfitted for more than a small share in the affairs of government. ”

“ No, Allyne, my boy, Fair’s troubles are not financial—and as for women——”
“Yes, that’s the difficulty,” broke in Allyne. “If it were almost any other man, one might say, ‘Find the lady in the puzzle’; but Fair is an iced edition of Sir Galahad. But whatever it is, he has a horror of some kind eating out that big, warm, pure heart of his. And, Travers, old man, we must get at the truth tonight and save him.” ”

“ THERE is a cradle within the door of one of the great institutions of New York before which a constantly recurring tragedy is being enacted. It is a plain cradle, quite simply draped in white, but with such a look of cozy comfort about it that one would scarcely suspect it to be a cradle of sorrow. ”

“ It would have been best for them, at a given time, to have said: ‘Beginning from today, we will pay no attention to any male who is more than fifteen years of age and who is now, or within the next six years will be, entitled to a vote. But we will direct all efforts to an entirely new body of suffragists.’ They should then have turned their attention to the women of the land, to the mothers of future generations of voters. It has been said that ‘Every woman is at heart a royalist.’ It could with equal truth be said: ‘Every woman is by nature a politician.’ ... ”

“ When the very rich men are called by their right names there will not be such a scramble to get rich.
It is to be hoped that in this fight with the trusts and railroad corporations that “big stick” of Teddy’s will not prove to be a stuffed club.
If Uncle Sam wants to mix his credit with anybody’s let him mix it with that of the farmers. Their security is better than bonds.
More that half of the men in the United States Senate wear corporation collars.
If all the big thieves were sentenced to jail we should have to turn the little thieves out in order to make room for them. ”

“ Cleveland himself volunteered to say: “Our unfortunate financial plight is not the result of untoward events, nor of conditions relating to our natural resources, nor is it traceable to any of the afflictions which frequently check national growth and prosperity. With plenteous crops, with abundant promise of remunerative production and manufacture, with unusual invitation to safe investment and with satisfactory assurance to business enterprise, suddenly financial distrust and fear have sprung up on every side.” ”

“ Shall Ransy Sniffle always succeed in embroiling those who want to be friends?
When I think of Abraham Lincoln—magnanimous, broad, far-seeing, praising the Confederates who had stormed the heights at Gettysburg, calling upon the band to play “Dixie” on the night following Lee’s surrender—and then contemplate this narrow, spiteful, out-of-date Professor of History at Harvard, I realize more than ever how much the South lost when a madman assassinated the statesman who had her blood in his veins, sympathy for her in his heart, and a knowledge of her in his mind. ”

“ The Beef Trust shuns advertisement; the Racing Trust welcomes it. Any reputable undertaking must pay heavily for the support of the press; the Racing Trust gets such support in columns per day for a ridiculously small subvention. The press poses as a teacher of morality. In the case of the Racing Trust it plays the part of a panderer without getting the price insisted upon by that unutterable in any other walk of life.
Americans believe that they possess a quality of humor that is far superior to that which bears the hall-mark of any other nationality. ”

“ Again, a movement for any one of the reforms which are now pressing to the fore would appeal with irresistible force to its advocates if they knew that success at the polls would incorporate its provisions in the organic law of the land. Those who believe that the best interests of the nation will be conserved by more just systems of taxation, by direct legislation, by the control or ownership of the means of transportation [Pg 317] and other measures in line with the logic of events, would know that they were not fighting in vain if a victory with the ballot meant a legislative victory. ”

“ We assent to the insane doctrine that there is not enough of wisdom in a House of Representatives elected by 17,000,000 voters, combined with the check of an ultra-conservative Senate chosen by forty-five state legislatures, and indorsed by the judgment and responsibility of a President, to incorporate for our government a law until such law has been affirmed by the majority of a Supreme Court. ”

“ Nearly every civilized nation in the world owns all or a part of its system of railroad and telegraph lines, and they have no disposition to turn them over to private corporations. The United States alone permits a few wealthy buccaneers to levy taxes on the people which no government would dare do. An increase of three cents per bushel on corn alone means a tax of fifty millions of dollars to the men who produce that cereal. ”