Alma record. (Alma, Mich.) 1878-1928, 1895-02-22
The COLD Hog Casts His shadow
MAC

| fered another defeat in his financial
consequence. He must be quite famil-
| lar with the sensation of being crushed.
But the issue thus joined and thus met
has "A significance that cannot he meas
ured by any tape line of personality,
and, for that matter, Thomas Is. Reed
was really more in evidence this time
than Grover Cleveland.
The great thing was the population
of the single standard. Two great
London banking houses and the presi-
dent of the United States put their
heads together to rig Il purchase" on
! the United States, to force this coun-
try to adopt the British system Of gold
only. They thought the occasion OPP
perfume for repeating with unimport-
ant variation the infamy of 1873, when
a monetary revolution was wrought by
stealth. No thief in the night ever
worked more secretly. 1t was fifteen
years before the crime was detected.
In this case the only secrecy possible
was the negotiation of a bond sale
with a new kind of string to it. The
scheme was to put the interest on the
coin bonds so high that congress would
consent to substitute for them gold
| bonds bearing much lower rate of
interest. 1t was the old trick of Jacob
and his mess of pottage, only in this
case Esau did not take the soup. To
be make to pay half Il million dollars a
year, for thirty years, of extra and I'M
necessary interest to the ROthschids
and the Morgans is bad piece of bust
ness, but it is small matter as com
pared with the other horn OF the Iii
! lemma
The vote on this last administrative
measure was more decisive than its inn
mediate predecessor. The adverse ma
iority last week was twenty-seven, this
week forty-seven. The president was
beaten by his own party, even the dem
ocratic vote being 50 yeas to % nays
the same figures III both cases, only in
different order. 1t is probable that
| quite large part of that yea vote was
due to the fact that a good many out
going democrats are applicants for Of
lice. Standing before the president
hat in hand begging for position, they
could not be expected to reflect their
real sentiments at the expense of exec
utive disfavor.
The really significant vote came
from the republican side of the house
No republican was under any tempta-
ton to fawn-on Mr. Cleveland. 1t is
only fair to assume that if they voted
tor the proposition at all it was from
either personal conviction or in defer.
ence to what was supposed to be polt-
ical eXpediency. The republican vote
stood 3 for, 60 against, just two to
one against the measure. Mr. Aldrich
was the only Illinois republican for the
administration. The others: Cannon,
Hit, Henderson, Hopkins, Marsh,
| Funk, Smith, Childs, and Wheeler, are
conspicuous for absence from that list,
rs would have been the lamented Gen
eral Post had he been alive. Iowa has
the same number of republicans in the
| house as Illinois now has, ten, and that
delegation also furnished Just one vote
for the administration, Updegran. No
republican from Indiana voted yea.
Looking at the matter geographically
it appears that only two republicans
west of the Mississippi River voted yea,
Bartholdt, of St. Louis. and Updegraff,
of McGregor, Iowa. West of Ohio
there were only four: Aldrich of Chi
cago, Babcock of Wisconsin, and the
two first named. Ohio contributed
only one, Storcr, of Cincinnati. In
fine, the republican column, moving
eastward from the Pacific Ocean,
reache, the Allegheny Mountains with
out disclosing a beggarly tive support
ers of the single gold standard. Penn
sylvania contributed more yea votes
than the entire west, eight but even
that was not quite one-haH the repub-
lican delegation from that state
The republicans of New York, out Of
a total OF fourteen, contributed ten.
New England was much the same way
! 1 uc lWO AZ lltHthldLlNt> IOlu new
Hampshire, Blair and Baker. voted
nay. None of the Maine four voted
nay; but on the other hand, Mr.. Reed
could rally TO his side only one coll
league, Mr. Dingley. The names of
Boutelle and Millken do not appear in
either list. The two Vermont repre-.
sentatives followed Reed, as did the
one Connecticut republican. Massa-
chusetts has nine republicans, four of
whom voted yea Practically, then,
the republican strength for the single
gold standard is confined TO the Allan
tic seaboard, and even that narrow
strip is by no means solid, while the
rest of the country is practically solid
for the other side.
1t is impossible to mistake the mean
ing of this record and what it indicates
for the national republican platform of
1896. The gold hog has east his
shadow, and if lac has any skill in the