Barbour County index. [volume] (Medicine Lodge, Kan.) 1880-current, 1888-10-31
"oNLY A STEP.
Harrison's Flabby Objections to MT. Glove
lands Tariff Reform Message.

Harrison's F1abby Objections to MT. Glove
lands Tariff Reform Message.
The flabbiest objection to the tariff reform
proposed in the Presideut's message and
embodied TO certain extent in the Mills
bill, is that made by General Harrison in
his letter of acceptance. 1t is an Sbjection
which seems flabby even TO his own follow
ers; for those who join with him in making
it do so in the most gingerly fashion imagin-
able, while the shrewder and more inteiit-
gent Of them utterly ignore it.
The objection is not to the Presidents
policy or to the Mills bill, but to what Mr..
Harrison regards as to the tendency in the
case. The Mills bill Is all night in itself; at
least he does not intimate aibelief to tho
contrary, being conscious no doubt that it
embodies the doctrines which the Republic
an party has been preaching for years
through its conventions, it's Presidents and
other public men. But because it is "a step
towards free trade" itls wholly objection
able and vicious. If the same bill were
offered by Republican committee to Re-
publican Congress he would find in it nothing
to condemn. 1t would not in that case be "a
step" 1t would be reform Of the tariff
''by It's friends" as the organs of the g.
.. p. are accustomed to say.
1t is not easy to conceive of a more utter
Gle of a Presidential candidate wagging his
head with owl-lilze soemnity and telling the
people that they must not indulge in bit
of reform to which he can find no word Of
objection, lest they may be induced later to
adopt reforms which he does regard as OBJ
jectionable, is simply ludicrous. II is like
telling a sick man that he must not take any
medicine, however helpful or harmless, be-
cause it is "a step in the direction of taking
poison. 1t recalls the story, says the De-
troit Free Press, that Hans Christian Ander-
sen tells of "Clever Alice" and her worri-
ment about the axe 1t was harmless axe
that stood against the cellar wall, whittier
Alice had gone to draw some molasses; but
rs Alice looked at it she thought of the pos
sibility that she might some time in the
fuuure be married to a woodsman and
eventually become the mother of a flaxen-
haired boy who would get to playing with
the axe and kill himself. And as the dread
full picture unrolled itself before Alice's
eyes and she sees the little fiaxen-haired
boy still in death, the tears welled up from
her eyes and the molasses from the cask
and the floor OF the cellar was flooded 1t
was bad case Of stopping over" IN every
sense; but il was not one whit worse than
the ''slopping ov~r" in Harrison's case.
The absurdity of Mr.. Harrison's attitude
in this matter can not, perhaps, be made
more glaringly apparent than 1t was uuwit-
tingly by one of the protection organs-we
do not now recall which one-that under
took to defend him. The defense was by
an illustration drawn from the troublous
times of 1860, when the South objected To
the election of Lincoln, not because he and
| his party intended TO abolish slavery, but
becsuse his election would be ga stepn to-
ward abolition. Mr.. Harrison's defender
| used this illustration IN utter unconscious
ness, apparently, thatit was arguing against
I the right of the people to elect Lincoln in
/ 1860, or the propriety of their doing so il
! they saw fit, because it was "a step" in the
! direction of abolishing slavery.
In free country free men are not 60
| ing to be driven or dissuaded from doing
what they know or believe to be polite
/ right through fear that they may be in
| duced thereafter to do something else The
] people of the United States are not going To
| decline the tariff reform medicine which
they know they need because Dr. Harrison
| is afraid they may sometime in the future
| take an overdose.
There is one aspect of the Harrison argu-
! ment in which it is not ridiculous. 1t has
| its serious side; and ON that side it is the
confession of fear that the results of the
| tariff reform in the Mills bill will be 50
| beneficial to the whole people that they will
demand more of it. This is what the candi-
date means when he calls the bill ''only a
step toward free trade" In hls inmost
heart he feels that the step towards free
dom will make freedom so attractive that
the old dogmas of friends and benefciaries
of industrial and commercial slavery will
lose their grip. 1t is Harrison, of all the
candidates, that is really the free trader
1t is he alone who regards free trade as so
attractive that the people can not be re-
strained from demanding it if they arc once
| permitted to take a step towards it.