Los Angeles daily herald., 1888-10-03
Begging the q Question-The ssTim,

Begging the QuesttOn-rhe q ssTimes."
When the student of political history
reviews the discussions of the present
Presidential campaign the first thing that
will strike him is the logical symmetry
OF the position Of President Cleveland
and the leaders of the Democratic
party. Our opponents, on the other
hand, have from the first been
ratified to the point of Mysteries.
No more senseless attitude has ever
been taken by party than that volun-
tarily assumed by the Republicans. On
one side we have the President who, in
December last, found himself confronted
by the spectacle of steadily growing
surplus. In the previous summer he
had to face alone what very nearly
proved to be panic, and was only pre-
vented from becoming one by anticipat-
ing extensively interest on United States
bonds, and by large purchases OF those
bonds in the open market, at the ruling
premium. This the President properly
regarded as a great national peril.
Slowly but surely the circulating medium
was being curtailed, and business was
being deprived of the money which was
needed to assure it activity and buoy
ancy. In his December message Mr..
Cleveland made suggestions in the line
Of tariff reduction and reform which
would decrease the revenue, leave the
money which was piling up in the Treas
ury OF the United States in the channels
of trade; and, by giving the manufac-
turers free raw materials, stimulate
home industry and assure for manufac-
tured products of American skill and
labor market as wide as the world. In
this message President Cleveland was
careful to show his regard for American
labor; and in one of it's striking passages
he said, in substance, that, as long as it
was necessary to raise large revenue for
the maintenance of the Government, call
it by what name one may, these taxes
would be so imposed as to protect the
American laborer and to equalize the
high wages earned by the workingmen
in the United States with the low wages
paid in Europe.
Immediately Republican politicians
raised the cry of free trade. They have
kept this senseless howl up ever since.
From their own superheated imagina-
tions they have evolved specter which
is as unreal as the baseless fabric of a
vision.
After months of this hollow yawp, Mr..
Cleveland, after having been renomi-
mated for the great trust which he has
discharged so patriotically, in his letter
OF acceptance again went out of his way
to affirm the sincerity of his position,
and the most conspicuous sentence in
that document is, "We have entered
upon no crusade of free trade"
And still our Republican brethren
verify the old adage, "None so blind as
they who will not see." From the very
opening of the campaign they have
begged the question; and have not
dared, in a single instance, to state the
position of their adversaries fairly or to
meet them in the arena of square argu-
ment.
In the Los Angeles Times, of Monday,
under the head Of ga Popular Demo-
cratic Fallacy," we find this same kind
OF gross misstatement of the Democratic
position. 1t attempts to prove that the
tariff does not increase the price of
American manufactured goods. If it
does not, then why all this outcry about
the danger to the wages of the American
workingman from reduction of the
tariff? If competition and not high
protective duty regulates the price
of the American finished pro-
duct, why waste words about placing
certain raw materials and necessaries of
life on the free list? Our contempor-
ary's argument proves too much. Hold
ing such views, it was surely not neces-
sary to misstate President Cleveland's
position as an incident of an argument
which really confirms the Democratic |
position, which is moderate and conser-
vative? The Tsmes's assumption of the |
Presidents attitude goes to lengths that
no Democrat authorized to speak for his
party dreams of going, and which Mr..
Cleveland has expressly repudiated. If
the tariff has nothing to do with the
price of goods, why bawl about reducing
it moderately so as to leave, by the re-
duction, money with the people to vital
ize business, instead of boarding it up in
the Treasury? 1t seems to us that our
contemporary, the Times, in its |
issue of Monday, has given US most
happy illustration of that
Vaulting ambition which o'erleaps itself
And falls O. the other side.
According to the Times the tariff en-
ters SO little into the price of the Ameri-
can manufactured staple that we can af-
ford to sell American goods to Canada
against the world. Hear it:
Well, let us take Canada-our nearest
nelghbor-as an example. 1t can buy
and discriminates in it's tariff
against none. If it buys of the United
States it must be because it can buy
here to better advantage. Canada does
buy very largely Of articles which, ac-
cording to President Cleveland. are
increased in cost by an amount "corre-
spending with the duty on foreign arti-
cles of the same kind" The total ex-