Belmont chronicle. [volume] (St. Clairsville, Ohio) 1855-1973, 1894-05-03
THE DEMOCRATS RESPONSIBLE.
Commercial Gazette.

Pittsburgh Commercial Gazette.
No one but perverse and determined
partisan will pretend that the Demo
cratic party is not responsible for the
present deplorable condition of the
country. The financial panic, the in
dustrial depression and the uncertainty
as to the future all sprung from the
same source-want of confidence in the
ability of the Democratic party to govern
the country wisely and well. 1t started
in to reverse the economic policy of a
generation-a policy under which the
nation had attained its highest degree
of prosperity in a single year of
blundering and imbecility it filed the
land with misery and despair.
This is no longer the view taken by
Republicans. Many Democratic editors
and speakers do not hesitate to place the
responsibility where it justly belongs.
The New York Herald asks: "Are the
Democratic managers in the Senate hope
lessly blind or are they recklessly in
different to the consequences, daily
growing more serious, of their criminal
income tax folly and demoralizing tariff
agitation? Long ago the suspense con-
sequent upon this agitation worked its
disastrous effects upon the great money
centers of the country. Then it attacked
business and industry. Trade was
blighted, mills and factories were closed,
and workingmen by the thousand thrown
out of employment"
But this is not all. The attack upon
the tariff is not the only act of partisan
folly of which the Democracy has been
guilty. 1t is the instigator of the
sectional and socialistic income tax,
concerning which, the Herald says: son
top of this blighting delay to give the
country relief from the baneful tariff
agitation is the income tax folly, which
has been persisted in until it has become
simply criminality. The Democratic
support which this Populist fad has re-
ceived has proved as mischievous as it
is amazing. 1t has done more than
anything else to further the spread of
Populism and crankism revealed in the
epidemic of absurd demonstrations that
has broken out in various parts of the
country"
Senator PETER and Gov. Waite are not
the sole champions of Populism. Presi-
dent Cleveland, Secretary Carlisle, Sena
tor Voorhees,, and other representative
Democrats, having made the income
tax party measure, have 'lent apparent
respectability to Populism, stimulated
fanaticism and fomented unrest"
Another Democratic paper, the Phila-
delphia Times, protesting against the
odious and sectional income tax, says:
"In the present attitude of the South,
and the present political conditions,
there is not a doubt that every Northern
State would vote Republican, and it
would not simply be defeat for the
Northern Democracy, but it would be
practically annihilation. 1t would assure
Republican President, Senate and
House in 1896 that would not only
promptly repeal the income tax bill but
renew taxes upon the masses of the
monopolies and trusts, and end the free
dom of elections in the reconstructed
States. This is the entertainment to
which the South is inviting itself, and
it must decide the issue for itself"
Yet Cleveland, Mills and scores of
other Democratic leaders are urging the
passage of the income tax as an essential
part of the tariff reform which the party
is pledged to securel Verify, the solid
South has precipitated a political re-
bellion against the industrial interests
and economic principles of the North,
which, If persisted in, will end in another