The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-11-26
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 96, 1870.
THE FREE7RADB PRO

THE FREH-IRADE PHOGRdMMb ~.
RECENT numbers of the New York World
contain several articles which prove that the
scheme to sell out Pennsylvania and Penn
sylvenia interests is making rapid hesdway
among the sachems of Tammany Hall, and
that the Democracy of this Commonwealth
are once more to be assigned the ignoble
task of Turing her people to ruin. The tariff
has loomed up from comparative obscurity,
as an abstract question, into paramount i'm
portanoe as the vital issue of the day, upon
the solution of which depends not merely
the relative power of the contend
ing parties, but the industrial
welfare of millions of American artisans and
the whole future prosperity of Pennsylvania.
The Democratic rulers of New York city and
State hope to win supreme power in the ma
Hon by an issue that will exalt the metropo-
lis which they rule so infamously upon our
ruin, and our citizens of the Democratic faith
are called upon to commit industrial suicide
that few of the meanest of her politicians
may feed upon the crumbs that fall from
Tweed, Fisk, and Hoffman's groaning table.
The New York World is teeming with argu-
ments to prove that the Democratic party is
Ito quote its own language) committed by
its principles, its convictions, its recorded
history, and still more by its hopes and aspira-
tions, to FREE TRADE" On this text it rings
the changes, claiming, in support of its
theory, that only five out of ninety-three De-
mocratic Congressman elect are protection
lists, and that this list embraces only one Of
the ele0en neU Democratic members
from Pennsylvania. Starting from
this standpoint and assuming that the Demo
cratic party is irretrievably committed to
free trade, while the bulk of the Republican
party is inseparably welded to protection,
the World announces its expectation and
desire 'sto float over the sand-bars of old
issues on the rising tide" of the presumed
popularity of its destructive dogma. The
programme is very simple and very frankly
avowed. 1t is to entice every Republican
ee-trader into the Democratic camp to begin
this work in the organization of the next
House of Representatives by smoothing the
road to the so-called revenue reformers
elected to that body; and to follow
it up by marching all the rank and file Repub-
loan free-traders over this macadamized
highway in the coming Presidential campaign.
It remains to be seen, however, whether all De-
mooratic protectionists love their party better
than their industrial interests, and whether they
are to be fettered by the old ties which the
revenue reformers are presumably about to
rudely snap asunder. If all the Democrats of
Pennsylvania are ready to offer themselves up
as sacrifice upon an altar reared by the
implacable foes of her industries, the Worlds
programme will probably encounter COM
paratively little opposition in other quarters,
and the Democrats in this Commonwealth
who are anxious to see their party ride into
power by process which will at once cover
them with individual infamy and infict in
describable injury upon all our manufactur-
ing, mining, financial, and industrial inte-
rests, have only to suffer the WorIdS
leadership to pass unchalleneed