Aberdeen herald. [volume] (Aberdeen, Chehalis County, W.T.) 1886-1917, 1891-10-15
THE DEMOCRATIC ISSUE.

Is it not, after all, the issue, and not
he candidate, that counts in the election
president? He was something more
han a. humorist who observed that by
he time the personality OF presidential
ominee was spread out over the whole
puntry it grew rather thin The inn
hense popularity of Mr.. Clay could not
hve him from defeat; and, in later times,
he examples OF General Hancock and
Ir Blaine point the same moral.
In the nature of things this must con-
nue. to be so, and more SO; the question
availability, and no. of individuality,
occupying the first place in the thought
Il the nominating conventions. 1t seems
b be the destiny of our republic to go on
|ugmentirg its grandeur and It's power
|lready concentrated beyond the dreams
If the most extreme federalism by the
hallway and the 'telegraph-until,a re-
public no longer except in name, its chief
magistrates become mere types, chosen
olely because of their representative
character, and not because of any especial
genius or fitness of their own.
The rival pretensions of Mr.. Cleveland
hnd Governor Hill, serious as they are
and hard as they may be to settle, must
yet be held by democrats as OF second
rate importance to the laying OF the lines
on which the next great political battle
is to be fought.
If American craftsmanship had any
sequence to it. and parties were governed
by any fixed, known, and reasonable
laws, this question would have been de-
termined by the defeat of Mr.. Cleveland
and the subsequent enactment of the
Mckinley tariff law. In 1888 the fight
was made by the democrats distinctly on
the tariff. 1t was made, as the politicians
say, ION principle" Those who made
it gave reasons for the faith that was in
them; and these reasons are as good now
as they were then. They are better; be-
cause the Mckinley Act is an intensified
ton of all which the advocates of reve-
nue. reform have held hurtful to the
country. If its predecessor was bad, it is
worse, and if it was wise and just to
attack the former, it ought to be still
wiser and more just to attack the latter.
In truth, the conflict between reve-
nue. tariff and a protective tariff-between
those who maintain that the government
has no constitutional right of taxation
except to raise the moneys needed for it's
own support, and those who maintain
that taxation ought to be adjusted so as
to favor certain classes and interests
an irrepressible conflict. 1t constitutes
an issue which will down at no mans
bidding. Mr.. Blaine's scheme Of re-
ciprocity, designed by that astute party
leader at once as a flank movement
against the democrats and bridge for
free-trade republicans, is proclamation
Of weakness, signal of distress, as nota-
Die as it is bold. Reciprocity is simply
free trade in broken doses, and surrenders
the whole case Of protection as dogma.
But it will not serve the purpose of its
author if the democrats are equal to the
emergency and to their duty. This latter
is to stand by their guns and to fight it
out on the line of 1888 until they have
substituted revenue tariff, on peace
footing, for the present protective tariff,
with it's high scale of war duties.
Just here we encounter an obstacle
which ought to have no place in our party
politics, and has none in the party poll
tics Of any other country. There is al
ways from certain quarters clamor for
"more money" and at the present mo-
ment this takes the form OF demand for
''more silver" The terms ''free coinage"
and unlimited coinage" are trolled from
stump to stump with vocabulary only
too significant of the absence of informa-
ton, whilst resolution after resolution is
passed by county meetings and district
conventions from which an intelligent
explanation might be sought in vain.
The question of coinage is a very COM
plicated question. 1t is not national, but
International There is not, and never
has been, any fixed relation between
gold and silver Our own coinage act is
an experiment. Any amendment to it
must be experimental. Those who talk
the loudest commonly know the least.
They ride the waves Of popular prejudice
unconscious of the depths below. A few
simple, salient facts, however, are OBJ
vious. The country must have enough
money to transact its business, and as
the national-bank notes are withdrawn,