DEVOTED TO THE PROTECTION OF AMERICAN LABOR AND INDUSTRIES.

CONTENTS.

PAGE JAY COOKE, Protectionist and Optimist....... 183 Looking for Trouble.....

Old Story; Modern Application

Don't Touch It at All......

The Woman's Share.....

A Kansas Democratic Platform....

Editorial

184

184

134

185

.......

Healthy Symptoms...

185 136-189 136

Futile, Worthless, Destructive...

Pacific Coast Republicanism..

136
137

The Iowa Idea....

187

What Protection Has Accomplished.-XVIII 198

Old Story; Modern Application. There is an old story of a bumpkin who saw a fowler take aim at a bird in the topmost branch of a tree, and who, when the gun had been discharged and the bird came down with a thud to the earth, observed: " That was a waste of powder; the fall alone was enough to kill the bird."

The Democratic party has always been addicted to equally shallow criticism. In the 70's the Democrats of Wisconsin were greenbackers. They bitterly denounced the resumption act; and when resumption was followed by a return of prosperity they refused to admit that the resumption act had anything to do with the improvement of business. In 1896 they furiously attacked the goid standard, having previously taken advantage of a brief lease of power to run afoul of the Protective Tariff. When Republican legislators enacted the Dingley law and placed the currency upon a sound basis, and prosperity returned after dreary years of panic and depression, the Democrats said the prosperity would have come anyhow, from the revival of confidence. their eyes were tightly closed to the fact that sound currency and the Dingley Tariff were the conditions precedent to the revival of confidence, without which confidence would not have revived any more than the bird that provoked the bumpkin's foolish remark would have fallen if it had not been shot.

LOOKING FOR TROUBLE.

Those Who Would Disturb Existing
Conditions Under Pretense
of Tariff Tinkering.

[Chicago Tribune.]
Gentlemen who are advocating the
readjustment of the Tariff and the dis-
turbing of business interests and of the
existing conditions which make for
general prosperity are hard to please.
They are mischievious or ignorant. Al-
though they are confronted with unex-
ampled prosperity in every part of the
country they do not seem to know it.
There are few idle men in any branch
of industry. Every competent work-
man who really wishes to get employ-
ment has little difficulty in finding it.
The "want" columns of the newspa-
pers are filled with demands for every
kind of labor and the "situations
wanted" columns have dwindled in
corresponding degree. In addition to
the marvelous activity in every line of
manufacture and trade, the country is
on the eve of the most abundant har-
vests known in many years. Appar-
ently there will be no crop failure of
any kind. Corn, wheat and cotton will
be marketed in enormous quantities,
and undoubtedly will fetch good prices.
There will be an abundance of corn for
feeding cattle, which should make
lower prices for beef, and the packers
will have better profits at lower prices
than they have had this year.

What ails these chronic malcontents
and discontents whose feelings find ex-
pression in the jeremiads of such cal-
amity howlers as Bryan? What is the
matter with them? Are they distressed
because of abounding prosperity? Do
they in a spirit of malice or reckless-
ness long to experiment with another
condition of affairs? Have they not
yet learned the lesson.that it is "bet-
ter to leave well enough alone?" Might
it not be advantageous for Chicago, for
instance, to feel the impulse of the
good times all about us and reap some
of the benefits which other cities are
enjoying?

The effort to disturb existing conditions in trade and business for the purpose of giving occupation to a certain class of restless politicians who have nothing to do in prosperous times is unwise, if not something worse, and exhibits the wanton spirit of the small boy who defaces public buildings, destroys private property and tortures animals to give expression to his superabundant "cussedness." Some of those who are SO

anxious to try "the other side" and experiment with depression and disaster appear to desire the fulfillment of these prophecies of evil even if their fellow citizens have to suffer therefrom. Others from lack of experience or from sheer selfishness, having no other occupation but politics

Those who desire this condition of things, those who would like to see the fires put out in the great mills at South Chicago-men walking the streets this winter looking in vain for employment, the highways full of tramps and hobos, the corridors of the city hall and the police stations crowded with vagrants -men, women and children actually perishing from hunger and cold-will do what they can to reverse present conditions. They will subscribe to the programme which the calamity howl. ers would like to have carried out for the delectation of their misguided followers. It is only candidates out of office and politicians out of jobs who would have a 66 change." They will not be gratified, for prosperity is the issue and all other questions are secondary."

66

Don't Touch It at All! We see no need of giving any assurance whatever that there shall be any immediate revision of the schedules. If the right sort of men are chosen, too, there will not be. Not one detail of the present bill can be assailed without shaking the entire structure to its foundation. Business confidence will be disturbed by such a shock and will depart. Everybody will stop activity to see what is going to happen. It will be impossible for the most ultra Protectionist to maintain the stability and present progress of the industrial system while they are effecting any change of base. The business of the country is doing magnificently as it is-it is a mischievous spirit which would meddle with these conditions, when the desirable results of such meddling are absolutely in doubt and when all previous attempts at such tinkering have been disastrous in their results. The business of the country is well adjusted to present conditions. He is no friend to general prosperity who will urge anything tending to interrupt these conditions. He who would be heard in a suggestion to modify one item in the schedule must show that the modification will do the good he claims for it. This will be hard for the most of the reformers to do. But they should be required to give bond that their efforts to repair and remodel won't shake the whole structureand bring down an avalanche of commercial stringency, distrust and disaster. And this the most redoubtable reformer cannot do. It can't be done.Toledo Times."

THE WOMAN'S SHARE.

What Wives and Mothers May Do in Behalf of the Cause of Protection and Prosperity.

64

You may try the system of Protection by any test you will, I care not what it is, and it meets every emergency, it answers every demand. More than that, it has not been against the Government, either in peace or in war. Free-Trade results in giving our money, our manufactures and our markets to other nations; Protection keeps money, markets and manufactures at home."-WILLIAM MCKINLEY.

Major McKinley, at the time he made the above statement in 1891, did not realize the extent of its fullness, nor what a disastrous change it would make in the lives of the American men and women should the flag of Protection be taken from over our States. He meant every word of it, appreciating as well as could any living man the necessity of a guard to American industries. But no human eye could see or human mind conceive the horrors of the next few years which followed the tearing away of the Tariff and the passage of the Wilson-Gorman bill.

The sentimental idea had taken possession of the voters that the poor man was oppressed by Protection and that the coffers of the rich were rapidly being filled with gold under a Protective Tariff law. Too soon they realized their mistake, and under the happy thought that four years would be the duration of hard times, and that if the policy of Cleveland continued depressing they would change it by their votes, they tried to close their eyes to the fact that starvation stared them in the face and it was only after two years of awful experience that they fully realized the magnitude of the mistake they had made.

After the political struggle of 1892 the people stopped, listened and remembered that that which this man in his infinite wisdom had prophesied would happen under a Free-Trade administration was close upon them. As one after another the factories closed and men lost their positions, the wives and mothers with their children were forced to labor for the first time in many years. Cleveland's administration was like a gruesome cloud which spread over the blue sky of prosperity, leaving no hope that the storm would cease soon enough so that anything could be saved from the wreckage. The voters in 1892 desired to do the right thing-no man tries to spite himself-but there no influence powerful enough brought to bear upon them that could show them the error of their ways. It has been aptly said that experience is a great teacher, and the American men and women learned in the school of poverty, taught by Grover Cleveland, that "all is not gold that glitters," and that the fawning sentimentalists. pre

was

tending to be the poor man's friends,
were but satiating their own avaricious
palates from the miseries of the Ameri-
can people. The blow fell with greater
violence upon the weaker part of the
nation and constant prayers uttered by
discouraged mothers arose from every
quarter of the country. At this point
it is eminently befitting to state that
those agonized petitions must have been
heard, for William McKinley stepped
from the quiet of his Canton home and
held out his hands to the people of the
United States.

The anguished strain in the suffering
nation's tone found an effective answer
in the echo of his own and so great was
the relief brought to paralyzed indus-
try that nearly every thinking unselfish
person pinned his faith to the man and
his policy. It became the sacred duty
of William McKinley to act as physi-
cian to the suffering people. Men may
come and go, Presidents be elected and
well beloved, but there can be but one
William McKinley, who by his wis-
dom and universal love for country
opened wide the doors of American
trade and placed a heart-broken nation
on prosperous footing.

It was just at this time that women began to take active part in politics. The political aspect was so bad that the men magnanimously said that the presence of women in the political field positively could not make the condition worse than it already was. Clubs under the auspices of women were organized all through the States. Indifferent persons were interested in the cause of prosperity by reading matter of various kinds, conspicuous among which was the call for a Protective Tariff law and the repeal of the Wilson-Gorman bill, then in damaging effect. An appeal was sent forth from headquarters, even into the small towns of the United States, for the wives and mothers to pause a moment and meditate upon the condition of affairs. The appeal was accompanied by interesting Tariff literature and the statement of facts in simple language that every woman could understand, which taught them why they were compelled to keep their children from school in their babyhood and why they were fighting starvation in a land where there always had been plenty.

Lecturing women were sent into the States where women voted and this question put straight to the voters:

"Do you want another four years like the last?"

It is conspicuous in the history of these States that a marvelous number of ballots cast for William McKinley were due to the pamphlets sent by the A associations and clubs of women. white wave of McKinley votes drowned the Bryanites in the strongest Democratic States. The people were tired of poverty and distress. They reasoned

in this wise that if a man of Grover Cleveland's years, with his mighty constituency and large experience, had made such havoc of a land once flowing with milk and honey, there would be absolutely nothing to hope for from the Nebraska boy and his demagogic principles.

A house to house canvass was made by Republican women in all large cities and in the literature which they spread the greediness of the opposing forces was shown up in clear light.

After the victory, during the first flush of exhiliaration, the Republican men sent to the Republican women a vote of thanks for their earnest endeavor and effective work. The politicians were convinced that the women in the States where the ballot had not been given them were not laboring simply for the chance of voting, so they gave them praise without stint.

The most conservative men in the country did not realize all that the Dingley Tariff bill did and could do. On its passage new industries sprang up like mushrooms, figuratively speaking. In one day the great commercial wheels were set going. The clouds of the previous four years were dispersed, and the name of William McKinley will always be held sacred to a loyal, truehearted people.

After two years of unparalleled prosperity under Republican rule-the FreeTrade system having dismally failedPresident McKinley made this statement, which is a fitting conclusion to this article or any other argument for a Protective Tariff:

"The best statesmanship for America is that which looks to the highest interest of American labor and the highest development of American resources."

GRACE MILLER WHITE.

66

A Kansas Democratic Platform. The Democrats of Miami County, Kan., have adopted a platform which is a model of frankness and brevity. Nothing is said about sixteen-to-one, or the trusts, or imperialism, or the robber Tariff, or the consent of the governed, viewing or "pointing with pride," or with alarm," or any kind or sort of principles, Jeffersonian or otherwise. The platform in full reads as follows: "Resolved, That the Republican party should be defeated in the State and the county and the rascals turned out of office." It is not stated why the " cals" should be turned out, but that, of It is in order course, is understood. that Democratic rascals may get in. Not often does the "appetite" party speak with such honesty and candor. Kansas has furnished a model of sincerity which the Democracy in other parts of the country will doubtless admire sincerely.-Rochester "Democrat and Chronicle."

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