The Scranton tribune. [volume] (Scranton, Pa.) 1891-1910, 1896-11-04
The Result Nationally.

The overwhelming victory Of William
Mckinley was a logical deduction from
the celebrated premise of his great
predecessor: "You cannot fool all Of
the people all the time" The people
were fooled in 1890 by the cry of wipe
out the surplus." They We're fooled in
1892 by the cry of cheaper duties and
cheaper clothes." But in 1896, after six
years of intimate experience with the
menace and the fulfilment of Demo-
cratic supremacy, after six instructive
years of deception, penitence and ex-
piation-they have made reply to the
latest false cry for a cheaper dollar in
the election by unexampled majorities
of a president, vice-president and con-
gress pledged to the maintenance OF
sound money and committed to tha
earliest possible restoration of Protec-
ton to American industries.
Now that the tension of natural anX-
iety has been relieved by the more
than generous fultilment of expecta-
tion, 1t is possible to speak with some
candor of certain features of this cam
vass which had in them many ele-
ments of quiet humor. Not the least or
these has been the grim necessity which
constrained so many of the bitterest
antagonists of Mckinley and Nc
Kinleyism'' in former years to lay
hostility to Protection and to rally
to the support of the man whom they
had only few weeks previously been
deriding as 'turncoat" and a "strad-
der" Unable to find enough of their
own class of economic extremists to
form an effective separate fighting
force, they saw before them the choice
either of being ground under the Jug
gernaut of the very Populistic prora-
ganda which they had so sedulously
cultivated four years ago, or else of
having to sacrifice traditional prejudice
on the altar of self-interst. They chose
the latter. They performed the sacri-
flee. They swallowed for a season
their pet theories on free trade and
declared for the Ohio Protectionist.
They announced that thev did this out
Of patriotism. We do not doubt that
many sound money Democrats We're in
this course hish-minded and sincere;
in fact, the country owes to them n
debt of gratitude for their patriotic
subordination of partisanism to public
duty which 1t will not soon forget;
but we nevertheless find not q little
amusement in the recent plight of
their less scrupulous free trade lead
ers, who after the desperate politics
of few years ago, We're burned into
line by the very fire which they then
so merrily enkindled. While we honor
the great rank and file of the sound
money Democracy because we believe
that 1t was sincere, we cannot say so
much for the Whitneys, the Clevelands,
and the Godkins, who took up with
Mckinley rather from necessity than
from manly choice.
The victory of yesterday was at its
root victory for Protection. The
money scare was only derivative. Had
Protection not been assailed in 1892 the
question of free coinage would not have
taken on serious proportions in 1896
1t was only surface symptom ground
ed in a diseased internal condition of
the public revenues. Good people mis-
took the symptom for the disease and
during the past few months have been
enjoying pretty series of shivers;
but back of it, below it, fundamental
to it all was the question Of Protection
or no Protection to American indus
tries, and on this broad issue William
Mckinley, liberal financier, a friend
of silver. bimetallist to the core, has
been elected president by a majority
unequalled since the second campaign
OF General Grant. When our free trade
friends of the ultra gold bug persua-
sion come to consider this whole mat
ter in calmness, they will search in
vain for the big quantity of gratifica-
tion which they seem to have inn
agined would be theirs to command in
the event of Bryan's defeat.
One can understand now why Quay