The weekly register. [volume] (Point Pleasant, Va. [W. Va.]) 1862-1909, 1888-12-05
Did The TnriT DO Ira


IF the tariff did it, how does it
come that the States of New Jersey
and Connecticut, where manufac-
turing operations bear heavier in
fiuence in proportion to population
than in any others in the Union,
gave Democratic majorities2
IF the tariff did it, how does it
come that Ashbell P. Fitch, who
was Republican member of Con-
gress, for the Mills Bill, came homo,
resigned his membership in the Re
publican party, was nominated by
Tammany, and was reelected by
over SCOOP
And SO we might go on asking
questions by the score, suggested by
different features of the returns.
For instance, if the tariff did it, why
do the Republicans make Congress
sional gains everywhere almost, save
in the great manufacturing States
of the South, Georgia and Alabama?
Doubtless the tariff did lose US
many votes. Mr.. Cleveland himself
admits that it did SO. The New
York Herald contends that such is
the fact and explains that athe
Democrats were beaten mainly be-
cause they undertook in a Presiden-
tial year to spring question on
the people about which they had
avoided instructing the people in
the previous years" This may
have been bad politics. Tits ever a
fact that graceful thing may lose
much of its effect by not being
gracefully done, and that good
thing may come at most inoppor-
tune time and be no very great good
on that account.
But the mistake was chiefly in de-
laying for so long to "spring the
question:" as the Herald puts it,
and tolcrating for SO long in the
party disposition to juggle and
play fast and loose with it, to dance
one way in obeisance to the high
tariff humbug and mako pretcnses
the other way to tariff reform.
That we have been beaten-largely
by cunning manipulation of preiu-
dices and greed, and with lavish
outlay of boodle-does not disprove
justice of the party's position on the
tariff. We did not succeed in con
vineing the workingmen that they
are geese to ,believe that they get
ono penny on wages moro than they
earn, or that they get even that un-
less they stand vigorously up for it;
but those who hold and vote on that
belief are geese all the same We
failed to convince the country that
there was not a duty in the Mills
bill below the protection standard,
or that cheaper clothing and food
would be greater gain than cheap
whiskey. Nevertheless those are
both facts. And one of two things
is certain-either the Republicans
will give the country tariff reform
very similar to the Mills bill, or
they will get the country into such
q mess before they are through with
it, that the voters will be good
deal hungrier to get them out, than
they We're to get them in. Our own
opinion is that they will take the
wiser course. It. is one thing to
preach arrant humbug during a
campaign, and quite another to
practice it in Congress, in cold
blood, and when big interests are
at stake. They won't call it free
trade, of course; not even tariff re-
form, probably. 1t will be dubbed
reducing the surplus and revising
the taxes. That will be the distinc-
ton. There will be no difference
that is, not any of great moment;
and out of it they will probably en-.
joy the plaudits of the people that
would have been ours, for doing the
same thing, had we begun a little
earlier to be, as we latterIy have
been, courageously honest for tariff
reform.