The Iola register. [volume] (Iola, Allen County, Kansas) 1875-1902, 1895-11-08
ISSUES OF REPUBLICANS.
Points on Which the Party VIII Make Its
Fight.

| Fight
On the tariff the democrats enter
the next campaign handicapped by the
fact that they repudiate their own
handiwork All of their leaders who
are entitled to receive respectful at
tention denounce the Wilson-Gorman
bill, and promise to supplant it by an
other. They cannot take any other po-
sition. They are traitors to their own
principles unless they pronounce as
treachery to these principles the work
of their own hands. All they can
promise is further agitation, further
change and unrest, with all the attend
ant misfOrtunes of such change and
unrest to the business community and
to the world of workingmen. The re-
pubIicans, on the other hand, stand for
a policy of commercial rest. They
wish to continue the protective policy.
They have no desire to carry the prin-
ciple to unreasonable extremes. All
they intend to do. if they have the
power, is to remodel the present law
wherever it is absolutely necessary to
do so in the interest of impartial JUS
tice, so that all sections and all indus
tries shall be treated alike.
At the present, however, the finan-
cial question bids fair to oyertop the
tariff in interest. If business had con-
tinued in its depressed condition, and
if there had been q failure of crops i'll
the west. the financial question would
have been slI-important, and the fight
would undoubtedly have resolved itself
| into a straight-Out contest for and
/ against free silver the democrats cham
pioning and the republicans opposing
unlimited coinage of the deprecated
metal. The partial return of prosperity,
| however, has checked the free silver
craze. The have always been
overwhelmingly against any form Of
"cheap" currency, whether under the
guise of fiat money or shortweight
silvr~ All of the presidential candi-
date IN the republican side are and
have been against it-Reed, Morton,
Mckinley. Harrison, Allison. The free
silver republicans are important only
because they are concentrated in num-
Der of the Rocky mountain states.
| These states are sparsely populated.
They count for little in party cOnven-
ton or in a national election, but they
count for a great deal in the senate;
and it is this disproportionate repre-
sentation in the senate that has given
the free silver people any weight at all
in the republican party.
1t is earnestly to be hoped that the re-
publican party will also make an ag-
Cressive fight on the question of Ameri-
cas- foreign policy. y policy of bun
combe and spread-eagleism in foreign
affairs would be sincerely to be depre-
Gated; but policy of tame submission
tn insult is even worse. In its foreign
policy the present democratic admins
tration has offered a most unpleasant
contrast to the preceding republican
administration. The very democrats
who have stood stouteSt in warning
against the great majority of their own
party for sound finance have also been
unpleasantly conspicuous in forcing
their party to adopt a thoroughly i'm
proper and un-American tone in for
eign affairs. Unfortunately, very many
decent men in the country, and espe-
cially in the northeast, are too timid, or
too unpatriotic, to wish the United
States to play the part it should among
the nations OF the earth. America
must never play the part of bully; but
even less must she play the part OF a
coward; and it is this last most unpleas-
ant part which, during the last two
years of democratic administration, she
has once or twice come near playing.
We should build Il tirst-class fighting
Maya navy, not of mere swift COM
merce destroyers. but of powerful bat
tie ships. We should annex Hawaii i'm
mediately. 1t was n crime against the
United States. 1t was crime against
white civilization not to annex it two
years and a half ago. The delay did
damage that is perhaps irreparable; for
it meant that at the critical period of
the islands growth the influx of popu-
lation consisted not of white Ameri-
cans, but of lOw-caste laborers drawn
from the yellow races. We should
build the isthmian canal, and it
should be built either by the United
States government or under its protec-
ton. We should inform Great Britain,
with equal firmness and courtesy, that
the Monroe doctrine is very much alive,
and that the United States cannot toll
crate the ACKNOWLEDGEMENT of a Euro
pean power on American soil, especial
ly when such ACKNOWLEDGEMENT takes the
form of an attempt to seize the mouths
of the OrinOco.
This does not mean a policy of blus-
ter. No American president or secre-
tary of state, no American Legislative
body should ever make a threat which
is not, if necessary, to be backed by
force of arms. Honorable peace is al
ways desirable, but under no eircum-
stances should we permit ourselves TO be
defrauded of our Just rights by any fear
of war. No amount of material pros
perity can atone for lack of national
self-respect; and in no way can national
self-respect be easier lost than through
a peace obtained or preserved unworth-
lily, whether through cowardice or
through sluggish indifference.-Theo-
dore Roosevelt. in Century.
The Democratic Outlook.
The next presidential campaign will
be remarkable, if for no other reason
than because in it the democratic party
will have to ask retention in power upon
the ground that, if so retained, it will
undo most OF what it has done during the
years that it had free governmental
rnnkrol A rnar.fr alr,.nrs bases rniIch