The Dalles daily chronicle. [volume] (The Dalles, Or.) 1890-1948, 1894-11-20
1 DEMocRATC OPINION.

The San Francisco Examiner expresses
its opinion concerning the recent cleo
ton, Grover Cleveland, the Wilson bill,
and democracy generally, and in its
headline likens the president to Nero,
it reading: ''The Violinist at the Fire"
The Examiner lays the blame, not on
the party. but on the president, as fol-
lows:
president Cleveland, according to
the information of the New York Her
aid, is pleased at the result of the cleo
ton in New York, which he regards as
settling once for all Senator Hill's ex-
pectations for the party nomination for
president In this belief Mr.. Cleve-
land is Undoubtedly correct, but Mr..
Hill was not the only statesman engulfed
in Tuesdays earthquake. 1t would be
well for the president to shake himself
out of his complacent self-satisfaction
long enough to ask why it is that the
party that sent him to Washington two
years ago, backed by democratic sem
ate and 219 democratic representatives,
is now apparently a routed mob, with
its senatorial majority destroyed and
only dozen democratic members of the
house left from all the northern States
combined. It is an impressive fact that
the twenty-eight northern states stretch
ing from the Atlantic to the Pacific and
containing 100000 people, will send
hardly more than half as many demo-
cratic representatives to the next con-
gress as New York alone sends to the
present one. Who is responsible for the
change?
primarily, Grover Cleveland. 1t
was he that first halted the democracy
in it's victorious march. He compelled
tariff reform to wait while he peddled
out offices among his admirers. The
cloud of panic which had been plainly
visibly all through the latter parttof the
Harrison administration he permitted
to grow greater and blacker without
calling upon congress to repeal the vi
cious laws that had caused it. Not un-
til the storm had burst did he begin to
take any measure to avert its effects.
When the house had finally begun
to try to carry out some of the demo-
cratic promises with regard to the tariff
he allowed the influence of the admins
tration to be used to thwart it on the
most vital points. It was the interfer-
ence of Secretary Carlisle that-enabled
the sugar trust to. carry its point in the
senate.
<Mr. Cleveland was elected as civil
service reformer, and if he had consist
emily carried out his supposed princi-
pies in that regard the people would
have more than made up to him what
favor he might have lost among the pol
iticians. But his variety of civil-service
reform turned out to be merely white
house brand of spoils. Politicians who
asked for patronage on the strength of
services to the democratic party en-
countered a dignified reform frost, and
then saw the offices parceleH out for SER
vices to a Cleveland faction. If the
president had consistently made merit
the only test for appointment, and had
absolutely refused to create vacancies in
the public service to reward either his
friends OIL his enemies, he could have
established civil-service reform on an
nation of spoils and hypocrisy did not
captivate the people.
''The senators who treacherously
knitted tariff reform deserve all the
odium they have incurred, but it must
not be forgotten that as the revulsion
against the republican party four years
ago began before the Mckinley bill had
been heard of, so the revulsion against
the democracy last year began before
the senate had had chance to touch
the Wilson bill. It was the Harrison
administration, not the Reed Mckinley
congress, that was rebuked in 1889, and
twas the Cleveland administration, not
the Gormon-Brice senate, that was re-
buked in 1898. Gresham, Olney, Car
Isle and Sterling Morton are enough
for party to carry without senatorial
annex of the trusts"
Mr.. D. H. Stearns makes the bold as
sertion that he can demons trate, has
demonstrated that land west of the Cas-