The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1875-07-06
The Currency Question AS a Party
issue.

seasonably a controversy whose further prose-
cution at this time tends 10 consolidate the
republicans and divide the democrats Of the
country at large. The unity of the party will
not be promoted by the firebrand which has
been flung into the democratic camp. The
Ohio Convention should have foreseen that
their platform would provoke dissent and
denunciation in the Eastern organs OF the
party, and that an internal war this year fore
bodies something very different from harmony
in the Democratic National Convention next
year. 1t was to have been hoped that the
Western and Southern democratic indationlsts
would quietly have come around to the ira
ditional hard money views OF the party with
out being forced to notifying renunciation
Had the question been permitted to rest for
year or two q sound declaration on
the currency could have been in
serted In the national platform next
year, and party fealty would have
done the rest. But the Ohio blunder will
carry the controversy into the National Con-
vention, and the imitation democrats will sur
render only after hard fight in that body
The transfer of the quarrel to that arena is
inevitable unless the democratic party is
badly beaten in Ohio next October, and that
result might be preferable to strengthening
the democratic infiationists of the West and
South by local success on such q platform.
If the democracy of Ohio should be soundly
whipped this year tho hard money men will
easily have their own way in the National
Convention. 1t is ON unfortunate predica-
ment for the party at large to be placed in
1t is between the devil and the deep sea-"
The loss of Ohio will encourage the rspubl-
cans to believe that the ''tidal wave has been
stayed and turned back (; and, on the other
hand, democratic victory on an imitation
platform will enable the republicans to use
the same weapons with which they so de-
cisively put down the democracy in 1868. A
relapse to Pendletonism would be fatal, and
the danger of such relapse will be imminent
if the democrats carry Ohio this year on their
initiation platform.
The vigorous denunciation of this Ohio
platform by the Eastern democrats will put
the eminent inhationists of the party on the
defensive. 1t is not very consistent with the
pride of public men to be forced into re-
nunciation of their recent record The infa-
ton democrats would not feel humiliated by the
quiet adoption of hard money national plat
form next year, but An extorted pronunciation
il different thing Now that this issue has
been made they will take a keen personal in
terest in the success Of the Ohio infationists.
A large proportion of the democratic Soma
tors gave their ardent support to the imitation
bills last year. They will resist an open at
tempt to read them out of the party, and be
likely to make Strenuous exerions to ward off
o public rebuke Senator Gordon, of Georgia,
and Senator Merrimon, of North Carolina,
were among the foremost champions of inha-
ton in the debates last year. They were
zealously supported by Senators Johnston, of
Virginia; McCreery, of Kentucky Bogy, of
Missouri; Goldthwaite, of Alabama; Ransom,
of. North Carolina; Norwood, Of Georgia;
Dennis, of Maryland. And even Thur
mon, Stevenson, of Kentucky; Cooper, of
Tennessee; Davis, of West Virginia,
and Kelly, of Oregon, voted for Dawes COM
promise bill, which is the law now in force.
The only democratic Senators who were
stanch and steady for hard money were Bay
ard and Salisbury, Of Delaware Hager, of
California, and Stockton, of New Jersey
three Eastern men and one representative of
q State on the Pacific coast. The eminent
democratic Senators of the West and South
who we're zealots of imitation in the last Con-
gress, and whose imitation record cannot be
blotted out or soon forgotten, will not pa
tienHy consent to be put down or read out of
the party as recreant democrats. This con-
troversy having been stupidity reopened by
the Ohio democracy these men will feel con-
strained to stand by their recent record, and
their sympathies and good wishes, If not their
active efforts, will be given to the Ohio infia-
tionists. If Gordon and Merrimon and
McCreery and the rest should be persuaded
by Pendleton and Allen to go to Ohio and
stump the State in September they will have
committed themselves beyond the possibility
of retreat If, by their aid, Ohio is carried
by the initiation democracy there will be o
grand rally Of the South and West to control
the National Convention and transplant the
Ohio weed into a broader field, as was done
with such fatal results in 1863
If the democrats carry Ohio this ill-omened
controversy will be famed into new fervor by
the personal aspirations of rival candidates
Tilden's friends and Baysrd's friends will
strain every nerve to secure hard money
majority in the Convention, and the sup
porters Of every Western candidate will be
equally active on the other side. The nomi-
nation, as between the East and the West,
will be controlled by the result of the prelim-
mary struggle on the PLATFORM; for neither
Thurman nor Hendricks will have @ much
better chance than Pendleton himself in q
Convention which proclaims its unaIterable
devotion to hard money. Thurman has stood
by and held the garments of hard money while
it was stoned by the inhatonists at Columbus