Party Difference

The Senate, having become stranded on the Muscle Shoals Bill, has stuck there for many weeks unable to get off --but not without diversions from its enduring struggles. One of these brightened the Senate atmosphere last week. Two men produced the diversion.

One was Senator William Cabell Bruce, Maryland Democrat, iron-gray soldier of the old school, the man who stood out against his party's alignment with the Republican insurgents in the last session of Congress, the man who voted for the Mellon tax plan and other important measures with the regular Republicans.

The second was Senator Pat Harrison of Mississippi, also a Democrat, hardhitting, fierce-tongued orator, he who made the keynote speech of the last Democratic Convention.

The usual topic, Muscle Shoals, was being discussed. Mr. Harrison, in his usual pugnatious manner, made some reflections on a citizen of Maryland in connection with the "Fertilizer Trust." Mr. Bruce rose, defended the Marylander and then continued:

"I sometimes think that we should tear down the Statue of Liberty from the summit of this Capitol and place a big black pap bottle in its place. The idea seems to be that the Government is something to which resort is to be incessantly had for the coddling and artificial stimulation of private interests.

"This thing has gone on until the South itself, which used to be the chosen seat of State sovereignty and of individual initiative, enterprise and self-reliance, seems to be slowly succumbing to the same paternalistic notions. . . .

"The Democratic Party has recently been identifying itself to such an extent with departures of one sort and another from all the old true American ideas and ideals that it has lost for the time being the confidence of the country, which it had enjoyed so long as it was true to its time-honored principles and the leadership of Thomas Jefferson and Grover Cleveland.

"No! We Democrats now, like Sisyphus in the classic fable, must roll our great, heavy stone uphill again, and we never will roll it uphill again unless there shall be a reversion on the part of the party to its former sound ideas of the proper relations between the states and the National Government and between governmental activity and private industrial activity. . . ."

Arose the steaming Senator from Mississippi:

"I say that there are some Senators over here who could tell me that we have lost the confidence of the country, and I would pass it by, but Senators who make the allegation must be pure of heart and true in record. . . . No politics has heretofore been brought into any discussion at this session. It is a pity that the first voice to be raised in this Chamber against the Democratic Party is by an alleged Democratic Senator proclaiming that the Democratic Party has lost the confidence of the country.

"When we did not and could not believe in the principles handed to us by Secretary of the Treasury Mellon to give a greater reduction in the higher surtaxes than upon the taxes of the less-favored many, what Senator was it on this side of the aisle who failed to keep step with his Democratic colleagues and voted with those on the other side of the aisle who were championing the Mellon policy? . . . The Senator who attempts to lecture me upon my democracy, upon my loyalty and allegiance to it and its principles and policies must come with clean hands and not be tainted with reactionism and Republican allegiance."

At this the mighty Bruce again uprose with winged words:

"All of us will recollect that a painfully incorrect impression was entertained of the intellectual capacity of Benjamin Harrison before he became President, and even after he became President he was subject to no little unjust disparagement. Upon one occasion it is said that a citizen of Indiana went to the White House to have an interview with him, and that the messenger who took the request of this citizen in to him reported: 'The President says that you can not see him.' 'Well,' said the citizen of Indiana, 'I know that he is damned small, but I did not know that he was so small that he could not be seen.' I knew that the Senator from Mississippi was a narrow, contracted, small-bore partisan, but I confess that I did not begin to take the real measure of his dimensions as a statesman until I became the subject of the coarse diatribe which he has just directed against me. ... I was voting the Democratic ticket when the Senator from Mississippi was born. I made a speech in behalf of that gallant soldier, Winfield S. Hancock, when he was the Democratic candidate for the presidency of the United States, even before I was old enough to vote for him, and from that day to this my voice, my pen, my purse, my vote have been consistently employed in the maintenance of true Democratic principles and in securing the success of Democratic candidates, even when, as in this last presidential contest, it seemed to me that nothing could be clearer than the fact that the party was steering right on to a jagged and destructive rock.

"The Senator from Mississippi may think that he is a truer Democrat than I am, but he is not. In the language of the old English battle hymn, 'I love that broad red banner.' At times I have followed it exultantly to victory, and at times I have followed it sorrowfully to defeat, but I shall aways continue to follow it. ... We Maryland Democrats came up to the polls on election day exactly as the gallant Confederates led by Pickett came up to the heights at Gettysburg--with undaunted courage and loyalty, but with the certainty in the hearts of all of us that election day in November would not be our day, but the day of our old, immemorial antagonist."