Santa Fe daily New Mexican. [volume] (Santa Fe, N.M.) 1885-1897, 1892-10-20

both houses. The national banking act
! was denounced as unconstitutional by
thc Democratic party during the war,
and It's hostility to the system has not
ceased to this day, when the repeal of
the tax on state bank issues is deliber.
ately proposed in its national platform.
That party thirty years ago defended
these state issues, although they were
not secured, had no uniform value
/ throughout the country, were easily
counterfeited and displaced greenbacks.
1t advocates return to the same system
now, and apparently from a deliberate
preference for an inferior currency.
The Republican party stands for the
principle of equal political rights
throughout the Union. The Democratic
party not only repudiated the doctrine
| when its representatives in congress
voted against the constitutional amend
lnents at the close of the war, but in its
! political practice it has continually fol-
lowed the worst traditions of slavery in
fomenting race prejudice and establish
ing minority rule.
The Republican party throughout its
history has been fighting the battle of
free labor. In the beginning it was
popular agitation to prevent the extern
sion of slavery to the territories, and
subsequently it was a terrible battle
with a slave owners rebellion, but in
the end it has been prolonged cam
paign in the interest of American labor
menaced with destructive and degrad-
ing competition from the labor of less
prosperous and enlightened European
states.
Since the first election of Lincoln 49,
100000 aliens have found homes and
workshops in America, yet notwith-
standing this immense addition to the
working force of the nation there has
been a gain of nearly so per cent. in the
average rate of wages. That result
could never have been accomplished
without Republican legislation for in
ternal improvements and the operation
of the homestead laws, and above all
without systematic protection of Ameri-
can labor employed in home industries.
For this comprehensive national policy,
which has not only converted the older
eastern states into hives of manufacture
ing and filled the wild reaches of the
west with the pulsating beat and throb |
Of industrial energy and American en-
terprise, but has also created the new
south, with its boundless resources,
credit is wholly to be given to the Re-
publican party.
The Democratic party has never lost
the impress of the domination of the
slave power. A low tariff and free trade
were the economic doctrines of the
southern planters and were embodied in
the Confederate constitution. The Demo-
cratic party has remained loyal to these
malign traditions. It's first and only
president since Buchanan's election on
platform of progressive free trade" lost
no time in giving the signal for tariff
reform campaign, which, if successful,
would leave American industry and labor
without protection and support. The
party stands today fully committed not q
only to the low tariff cause to which both
Douglas and Breckenridge We're pledged
by the platforms of 1860, but also to the
extravagant vagary of Calhounism that
protection is unconstitutional. As it was
the friend and ally of slavery, so also it
is the irreconcilable foe of free labor.
The history of the two rival parties
since Lincoln's first election offers q
startling contrast between survivals of
the worst and the best traditions. Equal
lty of rights and sympathy for the mass
Of the common people were the leading
principles of Jefferson. A latter day
Democracy stands in the south for I'M
equal rights and minority conspiracies
md throughout the Union for tariff
policy by which American labor will be
degraded to the European level. Jack
sons great strength lay in his intense
devotion to the principle of nationality
md in his adherence of sectionalism.
A latter day Democracy, by the revival
If the constitutional quibbling of Cal
lounism and by its persistent hostility
o national policies, has repudiated his
principles. What has been best in the
endencies of history has fallen into in
locuous desuetude. What has been worst
n the theories and practice of it's slave
'wning and sectional leaders is tena-
iously preserved.