The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1880-06-29
THE DAILY PRESS
PORTLAND PUBLISHING co.
PORTLAND, ME.
The Cincinnati Platform,

More inconsistent with Democratic prac-
tices than the Cincinnati candidate, if possi-
BILE, is the Cincinnati platform. The resolu-
tions adopted are put in terse and sometimes
epigrammatic language that makes easy read
ing but at the same time serves to empha-
size the wide difference between Democratic
profession and Democratic performance.
The platform ':pledges" its trainers ''anew
to the constitutional doctrines and traditions
of the Democratic party" There is not one
of those doctrines, hard-money, State rights,
free trade, that has not been disregarded
again and again by the political organiza-
ton that afirms them year after year.
They have been honored, if at all, in the
breach; certainly not in the observance.
The platform proclaims Opposition to cen
tralzationism and that dangerous spirit of
encroachment which tends to consolidate
the powers of the departments in one"
This declaration is made by party whose
majority in Congress has sought to efface
the Executive, to gather all powers into the
hands of the Legislature, and to take from
the States and give to Congress the power of
choosing Presidential electors. The plat
form demands ''honest money" ''the strict
maintenance of the public faith,'' and "a
tariff for revenue only" These demands
are made by an organization that has allied
itself with the supporters of initiation and
reputation from Maine to Michigan, which
declared in one of its national platforms
fo,, tln Ne h. L. !
ciated paper, which has made more than
one attempt 10 repeal the resumption act,
and which has refused. in Congress after
Congress, to change a protective tariff.
The platform calls for the Standardization of
the military to the civil power and gener-
al and thorough reform of the civil service"
The military power is everywhere subordin-
ate to the civil and any. pretence to the con
trary was removed over three years ago bv a
Republican administration; and the Demo-
cratic party has shown its devotion to a re-
form of the civil service by increasing the
number of government employees as soon as
it got control of Congress. The platform
condemns the great fraud of 1S76-77''; that
is, it condemns the action of the Electoral
Commission, a Commission that was the
work Of its own hands and that it believed
was packed in its own interest. The plat
form insists upon the maintenance of the
right to a free ballot, while in many of the
States under the control of its trainers
thOus 4nds of voters are denied the suffrage
and beaten back from the ballot-box by the
menace of the shotgun, while in other
States, as in Maine, the verdict of the ballot
box is reversed, and Republican maiorities
ciphered away by democratic Tabuators.
The platform commends the thrift of the
Democratic Congress, Congress that has
gore on increasing expenditures and max
ing more and more lavish appropriations
ever since its lower branch fell under Demo
cratic control. The platform declares the
Democratic party ''the friend of labor and
laboring men," and pledges it to ''protect him
against the cormorants and the commune"
1t has repeatedly tried to rob him by lower
ing the value of his wages, and has failed to
protect him from cormorants like Tweed
and communists like Kearney. In word
the platform is a catalogue of empty profes
sious, conspicuous for its declarations in ia
vor Of measures which the Democratic par
ty has quietly ignored or openly fought. 1t
is as insit cere as The candidacy. Like that,
it is trick, bait for gudgeons.