Its position was all right, sure, but you can't get people excited about the Philippines.

They've got too much at home to interest them; they're too busy makin' a livin' to bother about the niggers in the Pacific.

The party's got to drop all them put-you-to-sleep issues and come out in 1908 for somethin' that will wake the people up; somethin' that will make it worth while to work for the party.
There's just one issue that would set this country on fire.

The Democratic party should say in the first plank of its platform: "We hereby declare, in national convention assembled, that the paramount issue now, always and forever, is the abolition of the iniquitous and villainous civil service laws which are destroyin' all patriotism, ruin in' the country and takin' away good jobs from them that earn them.

We pledge ourselves, if our ticket is elected, to repeal those laws at once and put every civil service reformer in jail." Just imagine the wild enthusiasm of the party, if that plank was adapted, and the rush of Republicans to join us in restorin' our country to what it was before this college professor's nightmare, called civil service reform, got hold of it! Of course, it would be all right to work in the platform some stuff about the tariff and sound money and the Philippines, as no platform seems to be complete without them, but they wouldn't count.