A Tale of Two Conventions - 1912 Author:William Jennings Bryan Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: The unit rule was the main cause of difficulty at Baltimore. It ought to be abolished and all delegates, except the four at large, ought to be selected by distri... more »cts, as Republican delegates are selected. Looking upon convention proceedings from the standpoint of one desiring improvement along every line I feel that the two great conventions of 1912, the Republican national convention at Chicago and the Democratic national convention at Baltimore, will prove epoch-making because of the reforms that will result from them. The chief lesson taught by the Baltimore convention was quite a different lesson from that taught at Chicago. It shows as no former convention has done the power of public opinion. The pressure brought to bear upon the Baltimore convention by "the Democrats at home" is a signal illustration of the fact that representative government is a fact in the United States. No plan of misrepresentation, whether intentional or unintentional, is likely to succeed when it becomes known. Governments throughout the world are becoming more and more responsive to the will of the people, and our own government is becoming increasingly sensitive to the wishes of the voters. The selection of Judge Parker for temporary chairman was a challenge to the progressive element of the party and the manner in which the challenge was accepted shows how sound the party is at heart.The anti-Morgan-Ryan-Belmont resolution would have been voted down by a considerable majority but for the fact that the delegates feared the wrath that a negative vote would have aroused at home. And so, in the concluding hours of the convention, an alliance with Mr. Murphy and with the interests which he represented in the convention became more and more a thing to be feared as the telegrams poured in from forty-...« less