Barbour County index. [volume] (Medicine Lodge, Kan.) 1880-current, 1888-05-16
THE TRUE ISSUE.
Indications That the Republican Party
VIII Avoid 1t and Adopt Its Old Dust
Throwing Policy.

Indications That the Republican Party
win Avoid 1t and Adopt Its Old Dust
Throwing Policy.
There is every indication that the Repub-
hcan party intends if possible to avoid the
issue of battle rendered by the President in
his message, or at least to so obscure it in a
cloud of non-essential issues as to make it a
subsidiary question. Every authoritative
declaration either in convention or by party
orators is in that direction. One of the
declarations of the Ohio platform has for its
burden the alleged suppressed vote in the
South General Harrison in his Chicago
speech dwelt strongly on this subject, and
while he could point out no remedy for the
supposed existing state of affairs in regard
to the negro vote in the South, he neverthe-
less declared that somehow and in some
way it should be made an issue
So other orators and certain Republican
newspapers take up the same burden and
hammer away at it, hoping by mere vociter-
alton to make the people believe there is
something in it. As has been pointed out
time and time again when this same matter
has been mooted, if the Republicans, when
they had the power, could no nothing, what
could they do if they were again restored TO
power! Simply nothing. Why, then, should
they tender such an issuel Because they
dishonesty wish to draw away the public
mind from the real vital question of the day,
and that is, how shall the ever increasing
surplus in the Turesury be reduced and the
people be relieved from taxationl
The Democrats say, reduce the tariff du-
ties; abolish the war taxation; make tho
income OF the Government only sufficient
for its needs, and leave all other money In
the pockets of the people Such, says the
Chicago Herald, is the tenor of the Presi-
dents and f0T. that ;c
the wisest and most statesmanlike declara-
ton made to the Nation for many years
The Republicans say in convention and
through their orators, let the money pile up
in the Treasury, and let as spend it. Pen
sion every soldier that ever went to the
war; pay back to the States the direct taxes
paid by them during the war; let the Gov
ernment spend the money in vast public i'm
provements; and if taxation must still be
reduced take it off those necessaries Of life,
whisky and tobacco but retain it to the last
cent on those luxuries of the poor, food,
fuel and clothing Absolutely and truly this
party of great moral ideas" through such
of its exponents as Pig-iron Kelley, Fora
ker, Foster and Mckinley, avows that it
would be better to have free or cheap whis-
Ky than to have cheap raiment, or cheap
coal, or cheap iron. What a shameless
avowal, and how that party has fallen from
its great estate
But il is so that men, after a long course
of battenlng on the people, get so pulled up
in their spider-like iusts, get so bloated and
depraved with what they have fed on, that
they can see nothing but their own web,
which they thinkis the world. These iron,
cotton and woolen barons, these trust
monopollsts will not give up easily what
they have so long held to be their own.
They do not care how much the faces of the
poor are ground, if so they can only pile up
more riches
Let not the working-man, let not the peo-
pie be deceived by the false and fraudulent
cry of " free trade" No party in this coun-
try desires free trade, or ever has Tariff
taxation has been familiar to the people
since the days of Washington Our habits
are adjusted to it, and no one desires its
abolishment. What we do desire, what the
Democratic party contends for, is a reduc-
ton OF that taxation TO the actual require
ments of the Government This is the one
true, substantial issue of the coming con-
test,