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Show Published Every Saturday BY GOODWIN8 WEEKLY PUBLISHING CO., INC. L. J. BRATAGER, Business Mgr. F. P. GALLAGHER, Editor and Mgr. I SUBSCRIPTION PRICE: in United States, Canada and Mexico $2.50 per year, the postage Including months. six for $1.50 Subscriptions to all foreign countries, within the Postal .Union, $4.50 per year. Single copies 10 cents. Payment should be made by Check, Money Order or Registered Letter, pay sble to The Citizen. Address all communications to The Citizen. Entered as second-clas- s matter, June 21, 1919, at the Postoffice at 8alt Lake City, Utah, under the Act of March 3, 1879. Salt Lake City, Utah. Ness Bldg. Phone Wasatch 5409. 311-12-- 13 DEMOCRA TIC CONVENTION BEDLAM OF FEUDS It does not require the training of a psycho-analy- st to know that the delegates who went to San Francisco believing in a party of the people, by the people, and for the people jwere and are disappointed. They came to understand that the administration leaders had a new definition of the Democratic party, although they did not shout the definition from the skyscrapers. According to this definition the Democratic party is a peoples party ruled by an autocrat. En passant, it is pertinent to remark that there is a strange disposition among people the world over to cry out for the rights of the proletariat and accept the dictation of czars. Witness, for example, the case of Russia. with the The zest for personal government is second-natur- e president. He acquired it as head of boys schools. To him a government is simply a school with a headmaster. To him a convention is a primary class held in awe by the teachers rod. Or, to put it differently, he is czar and all the rest are subjects. Colby was his viceroy and Carter Glass his messenger boy. Colby is cunning and able. Glass is narrow and juvenile. As Irvin Cobb remarked, when Glass moved about the hotel everybody took him old-fash-jione- ! dly for a bellhop. It was the Naturally there was a violent insurgent movement and the consequence is a party divided against itself. It remains to be seen what the most powerful federal machine in the history of the country can do. When Mr. Wilson went into office there were 257,000 federal employes; now there are 759,000. It is a powerful organization, but it has caused a split in Democratic ranks. The Democrats went to San Francisco confident that they could frame a platform that would appeal to all the unattached voters between the two seas. They tried to weave a patchwork quilt and succeeded, but it looks and feels like a wet blanket. It was not a compromise in the ordinary sense, for a compromise suggests a burying of hatchets. The Democratic compromise has eventuated in discord and the indications are that there will be a d tomahawks as the campaign proceeds. digging up of Nor is the platform a platform in the ordinary sense. Rather it is a circular track, made smoothing for running purposes. A platform is a declaration of principles. The Democrats flouted principles, not that they love principles less, but voters more. Their task was to discover how much they could promise without looking long-burie- foolish. on resolubellhop who named the tions. ignoring such party giants as Bryan and Cockran. He would risk nothing. Every man on the committee must be loyal to Wilson and the bellhops Virginia platform. If this was not the boss rule against which Democrats have ever professed to wage unceasing warfare, what was it? The result was what Bryan would call a paramount issue. The question was whether the yoke of the president should be accepted or rejected. To reject the yoke was to reject the Democratic administration even though efflorescent words should be used in the platform to indorse everything Wilsonian between March 4, 1913, and March 4, 1921. The presidential domination was a deadly incubus. The delegates were weighed down by it throughout the convention. Had they but been free from that domination, they could have framed an honest platform. As it was they worked constantly within the menacing shadow of the presidential despot. Whenever they had an idea of their own they heard the presidential spirit rapping yes or no. And the viceroy and the bellhop let it be known that they considered the delegates simply as rubber stamps to record the imperial will. It would have been entirely fitting had the dele- -' gates dressed in schoolboy and schoolgirl costumes. sub-committ- ee But, after all, the people elect candidates and not platforms. When Wilson was elected he immediately repudiated two of the principal planks in his platform and his party applauded. In fact, they congratulated themselves that their candidate was made of such In those stern stuff that he would not be bound by platform-makerhalcyon days they did not know that they had elected a czar who would carry personal government farther than any president since the administration of Andrew Jackson. The present platform of the Democrats contains more promises than many platforms of recent years, which means that there is more to repudiate if their candidate wins. The Republican platform was more concerned about stating facts and limiting its promises to the possible, and inasmuch as the nominee has agreed to substitute party for personal government we may be sure that the pledges of the platform mean more to him than the pledges of the Democratic platform mean to the Democratic nominee. s. CUMMINGS HURLS INSULTS Chairman Cummings impaired an otherwise effective speech by trying to make the illness of President Wilson a Democratic asset. |