The Portland daily press., 1894-07-21
BOSS CLEVELAND.

| BOSS CLEVELAND.
| The Presidents letter was written on
July second, just after the conference
committee on the tariff bill was appoint
ed. 1t was addressed to Chairman Will
son and marked personal" Its con-
| tents, however, show clearly enough
that it was never intended for Mr.. vii
| son He was III no need of arguments
to convert him to tariff reform, for he
was converted long ago, and was one of
its chief apostles. Obviously the letter
was intended to brace up the weak
kneed reformers on the committee, if
any there might be, and Mr.. Wilson was
to use it for that purpose. Having
answered that purpose the President ,or
MI. Wilson or both saw that it could be
used for another purpose. that of bracing
| up the Democratic majority in the
| House to stand by their conference COM
| mittee So permission was given Mr..
| Wilson to read it in connection with his
| speech.
The obvious purpose of writing the let
| ter and OF reading it to the House was to
bring the weight of executive influence
against the tariff bill as passed by the
Senate, and compel it's change iuto a
form that in the opinion of the, President
is more in accordance with Democratic
| principles and professions The Presi-
dent has undertaken to dictate what the
final form of the tariff bill shall be.
| He has not actually said that he will
| veto any measure that does not take the
form he dictates, but he allows this to
be inferred. There is that about
his performance that creates surprise
| surprise not at the fact that he should
undertake to direct legislation for that
he has been doing all along. but sur
| prise at the lack of tact in the method
\ of doing so. The. bill that he SO vigor-
| ously denounces has been passed by one
branch of Congress, in which the Dem
ocrats have clear majority. SO that the
| denunciation of the bill is denuncia-
| tion of the mem bers of his own party
who passed it. When he talks about the
Outrageous determinations" and nviola-
| tions of principle" contained in the bill,
he is striking Senators of his own party
| directly in the face. He is dealing the
| same kind of blows for which Senator
| Hill was denounced all over the country
by the Democratic press as the betrayer
of his party. Yet it is on these very
men whom he SO openly makes assault
that he must depend for the alterations
in the bill that he wants. Unless they
| can be induced to concede Something the
bill cannot be changed. The House may
stand firm to doomsday without accom-
| plishing anything more than the defeat of
all tariff legislation, which would be a
| much more inglorious ending of the tar
| iff reform crusade than the passage of
| the Senate bill, unless three or four
Democratic Senators can be induced to
yield something. Is the Presidents as
sault upon them under the sguise of a
personal letter calculated to put them in
a yielding mood? Will German and
| Brice and the two or three other Sena-
tors who hold the tariff bill in the FOL
low of their hands be likely to be i'm
bued with more accommodating spirit?
Will they be more anxious to oblige the
President after they read his denuncia-
ton of them as traitors to Democratic
principles: Unless senatorial human
nature is very different from human
nature in general, the result of the Pres
ident's course will be directly the oppu-
site. While the President has perhaps
stiffened up the House. which really
didn't need stiffening, to stand by its
bill, he has also undoubtedly stiffened
up the Senate to stand by it's measure.
He has increased the chances of an ir.
reconcilable deadlock between the two
houses, and, as consequence, of no tar
if legislation, and he has diminished
| the chances of any compromise along
the lines he lays down in his letter OF
any other lines. 1t may be that he has
done what he intended to do. 1t may
be that experimenting that if any bill
was passed it would most likely be the
Senate bill, and preferring no legisla-
ton at all to that, he deliberately set to
work to create an unbreakable deadlock
that would relieve him of the disagreed
bic act of vetoing the Senate bill, and
at the same time would prevent it's be-
coming law. This assumption certain
Iy makes the Presidents action a more
intelligent one than does the assumption
that he expected that it would
contribute to bringing the Sen
ate and House to an aggr cement.