The Nonpartisan Leader Newspaper, March 25, 1918, Page 6

- sons was the brilliant leader of the _“Cross of Gold” speech in Chicago Towa a “Gibraltar” and a “Vesuvius” A State Where One Party Has Predominated but Which Has B_een_the Birthplace of Many Protesting People’s Movements—Another of the Historical Articles BY RALPH L. HARMON OR 50 years nothing has been more certain than that Iowa would “go Republican”—noth- ing except death and taxes. For 50 years she has Leen the hope and despair of politicians, yielding with unfailing loyalty votes that scorned the “doubt- ful column.” For this reason she has been praised by her leaders, patted on the back by politicians and jollied along with the term “rock-ribbed.” Once indeed in that half cen- tury she did have a Democratic governor, Horace Boies, but Boies was elected in 1889 when the Republican party in Iowa was “dry” and his elec- tion did not mean that Iowa had been made safe for Democrats. His re-election two years later was another matter and falls in with the great mass of facts that show how Iowa has always had the vision. 2 The reason why Iowa has been so long regarded as “the Republican Gibraltar” has its symbol in Iowa’s 53 battle flags of the Civil war, now proudly shown to the visitor in the mellow old statehouse in Des Moines. Stained with heroes’ blood, tattered and torn, some with their staffs broken in combat with the foe, these 53 old battle flags now repose behind glass cases under the big gilt dome. Each flag is lovingly encased in a transparent tissue to save it from further decay and the dim stripes and regimental insignia can now scarcely be seen. So too, old Iowa, the Iowa of heroic deeds and black men’s liberty, has seemed to some to have her political voice sewed up and muffled in the impervious case of the weaving of 1861-65. And yet, how shallow is such‘a judgment! While Re- publicAn politicians have flattered her for her al- ways certain vote, and sought to make all Jowans think that serving the Republican party was the .only way to serve their country, there has glowed within this rock-ribbed Gibraltar the fires of Vesuvius. HOW IOWA HAS SHOWN 3 THE SPIRIT OF PROGRESS .Again and again in the last 40 years have these fires broken forth in “farmers’ movements,” in “independ- ent parties,” in fusion of the small and struggling factions in the hope that Iowa might achieve for -white men’s liberty what her sons of earlier years had achieved for the black men on southern battlefields. And as often as these efforts have risen to the sur- face they have been hooted down by the party bosses, laughed off the stage, and newspapers have combined to leave to posterity a history of ridicule out of which it would be dif- ficult to pick the threads of progress, which are Iowa’s eternal glory. But Iowa has the glory. For almost 40 years one of her distinguished forlorn hope. Sacrificing certain polit- ical power for the principles that he . loved, James B. Weaver left the party of his choice, the party that refused to meet new issues, and helped to form a new third party that should express the new economic outlook which be- gan to animate people .in the first decade after the Civil war. From 1865 down to 1912, when he passed away, General Weaver was a national figure. He led two national campaigns as a candidate for president, and- through all the party changes which swirled and eddied about him, Weaver stood firm as an anchored buoy, indi- cating that the. great fundamental causes that kept him on the surface were the same, no matter what the name. : 2 : In Jowa’s history General Weaver occupies a place similar to that of Bryan in Nebraska and.La Follette in Wisconsin—but he preceded them. both, and his active career was draw- ing to a close when Bryan made. his This is a tyi)ical ‘Towa landscape. Towa politically .and leaped into the limelight as the bearer of the people’s banner. Weaver was a brilliant young E. B. Fussell, Leader staff man, whose series of articles on the people’s and farmers’ fights for justice and democ- racy in states where the Nonpartisan league is now organizing have held - Leader readers during several months, will not finish the series he started. The historical sketches of Iowa (pre- sented herewith), and of Kansas and Nebraska (to come in succeeding is- sues), will be written by R. L. Harmon, also a Leader staff writer well known to our readers. Mr. Harmon is now in the states mentioned getting material to finish the series. Mr. Fussell has left the Leader staff for the duration of the war. He enlisted as a volunteer in the United States army at St. Paul last week and has gone to the ordnance department training school at the Uni- versity of California. After a short training course he goes to France to continue there the fight for democracy he has been carrying on in the columns of the Leader since he joined the staff of this publication over a year ago. Mr. Harmon is well qualified to sustain the interest of Leader readers in .this series of articles, which has attracted the attention of the country and may be issued in book form later. . is ‘a singular case. It is supposed to be a rock-ribbed Republican state, and yet it has originated and . fostered some great liberating movements ;of the farmers and common people . —protests against the domination of the state by the politicians and- the in- terests they serve. - = i P e SR e R SR lawyer when the war broke out, and he enlisted in his country’s cause. He fought throughout the war and returned to his home a colonel with the brevet rank of brigadier general. He was a Re- publican as a matter of course. In the Republican party he worked and served, but he was always in the forefront, declaring the rights of the people as opposed to special interests. Three times he was elected to congress, and in every case it was as the candidate who represented the Vesuvius in Towa affairs rather than the Gibraltar, its pro- gressiveness rather than its conservatism. JAMES B. WEAVER, PIONEER PROGRESSIVE After General Weaver’s final break with his party, and after his first term in congress, he be- came the presidential candidate of the Greenback party. The Greenback party is now in disrepute for among many good planks it had one advocat- ing the repudiation of the Civil war debt, and there are those who would like to connect James B. Weaver’s career with that party and let it go at that. But it was not as a Greenbacker that Gen- eral Weaver led in the great fight that was the outgrowth of the many “farmers’ movements” and the forerunner of that powerful third party which .has seemed for half a century to be just within the grasp of realization. The Greenback campaign was in 1880 and Weaver, as its presi- dential candidate, only got 308,000 votes. In 1884, when the farmers’ movement in Iowa was begin- ning its second eruption, he was sent to congress, where he served four years, and again in 1892 he led the People’s party. It was in this People’s. party movement that Weaver stood as the dis- tinguished beacon light of progressiveness, and he polled over 1,042,000 votes in a campaign that took him over the entire country. General Weaver was defeated, and with his de- . feat the People’s party, or “Populist” party,-as its enemies called it in de- rision, began to decline, but Weaver remained the active champion of po- litical progress and the inveterate enemy of boss politics. In the Iowa state convention of the People’s party in 1894, which was preparatory to that for president in 1896, Weaver supported two proposed resolutions that are of striking interest in the - light of what has since happened. . One of these -was the proposal that a national conference be called to meet in Des Moines in 1894 to dis-- cuss the revision of the federal Con- stitution. It was thought there were many things.that needed change in the century that had elapsed since the Constitution was adopted. ° This proposition was turned down by the Populists in 1894, but it so truly. pointed the way of progress that 12 years later just such a convention' was held in Des Moines for just that purpose, and it was backed by a Re- publican governor and attended by Republicans and Democrats from 16: - states. This convention is important and will be referred to later, but the other interesting thing that occurred at that Iowa convention was the pro- posal for public ownership—a pro- posal which now, 24 years later, has’ been indorsed by farmers in 14 states, ‘and is daily reindorsed every time that a ‘member signs the roll of the National Nonpartisan league. : PUBLIC OWNERSHIP PROPOSED LONG AGO / The resolution containing the in- dorsement of government ownership’ proposed “the adoption of a comipre- hensive .amendment to the federal Constitution which shall re-enact all valuable portions of the Constitution : of 1779 as subsequently amended and incorporate therein' those necessary reforms which are now :constitution- " ally impracticable,: including - elective »United: States senators, a single term . of the presidency, 'determined: by pop-