The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1894-09-01
AGAIN IN A "BAD Box"

The Herald has demonstrated beyond
fair dispute that the Republican organ
in this city has stated, time and again,
that the hard times which have come
upon the country were caused by the
decentralization of silver in 1873, and
that the restoration of silver would
make everything lovely, tariff or no
tariff" The logical conclusion, then,
must be that the contradictory asser-
ton of that paper that the hard times
were produced by a prospective change
in the tariff, is false. This is so evil
dent that it sets the aforesaid organ
in a rage. And it is always rash and
self-contradictory when in that condi-
ton. Undertaking to explain away its
own inconsistency, it gets itself into a
worse muddle than ever. The leader
in its editorial columns thus commences
on Friday:
With. the decentralization of silver in
1873 prices began to fall in the United
States The fall was very regular and
steady, and, in the aggregate, it
amounted up to last year to 2 per cent
a year. That is, prices fell 40 per cent
in twenty years, and there was a grow
ing pressure on all the producing forces
OF this country. 1t is well understood,
and the Republican party was repeated
" warned that unless the wrong was
stopped and righted, it would end in
their overthrow. but the leaders of the
party would not see it, and in 1892, not
because Of the tariff, but because Of
the growing pressure of hard times,
the party was overthrown.
1.-The growing pressure of hard
times" is good. 1t is good because it
is true, as well as because it is a Re
publican confession. The overthrow of
the party came because of that grow
ing pressure, the Tribune says. Good
again. But, it claims, that was not
caused by the tariff. Well, what was it
caused by? The decentralization of sill
yer in 1873, was it not? 1t is so stated
in the paragraph we have quoted from
the Tribune.
But in the same article that paper
blurts out:
And yet learned newspapers and
learned orators gibber to the people
that it was the characterization of sill
yer one and twenty years ago that
made the trouble.
Who was the first to "gibber to the
people, about that? The quotations
we have made in proof of that alleged
fact were solely and entirely the glib
behring's of the Tribune. The drift and
design of its present effort is to show
that ''tne threats involved by the cleo
ton of a Democratic President and the
assertion through their platform of the
utter destruction of the protective
tariff caused all the mischief. But
its own declarations are that the trou-
bic came from the growing pressure
during the twenty-one years "culmi-
mating in 1882
Then our contemporary resorts to
shutting. 1t says of the Democratic
party:
I'm one breath they say that it was
the Republican tariff that did the bust
ness: wait until our revised tariff has
a chance to work. In the next breath
they say ii was the characterization of
Isilver by the Republican party in 1873
that did the business, because here is
The Tribune that says so.''
Oh! no. The contradiction is not
ours. The assertions about hard times
are made by Republicans. They charge
them to the threat of tariff changes, .
or as they put it, 1.-The fear Of free
trade" We respond that if the de-
preston in trade and industry was
caused by the tariff it must have been
the Republican tariff, for that was the
lonly tariff in operation. The demone-
tization theory. as the cause Of hard
times. increasing from 1878 till their
Iculmination in 1893. is also spun by Re-
publican argument weavers and they
must abide by their own work The
conflicting theories are theirs, not
ours.
II the tariff had nothing to do with