The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1896-10-08
MIR. sEwALL ACCEPTS.

MR. SEWALL ACCEPTS.
II Mr.. Tom Watson entertained any
hope that Mr.. Sewall would decline
the honor thrust upon him at Chicago
and leave him as Mr.. Bryan's "other
dear charmer,' the publication OF his
letter of acceptance will fall on and
wfther the hope as April frost blasts
the vines in a Georgia watermelon
patch. Heretofore the distracting
enigma of politics has been: Which
of the two will withdraw? 1t is now
reduced to: VIII Watson pull off? His
public emission of what he Is pleased
to style his opinions leave little doubt
as to what his answer is. Mr. Watson
will stick. Not that he expects that
he will sit where Adlai sits, but be-
cause his love of country is so intense,
his sense of the dignity of the vice
presidential office so exalted, that he
willingly and gladly offers himself as
sacrifice in order that no "wart''
shall ever fill that honored chair.
But Mr.. Sewall accepts. He can do
this without any jettison of those
business principles that stand, with
him, for political principle He would
have felt constrained to decline the
same nomination in 1892 because the
declaration in the platform that year
that protection is a fraud and a rob-
berry of the mass for the benefit of
the few" would have been so contra
dictory to his business principles that
his self-respect, as well as his venera-
ton for business, would have con-
strained him to refuse a nomination on
plank so at variance with his ideas
of government and what it is for. The
president of an association to protect
our merchant marine by bounties,
navigation laws and stiff discriminat-
ing taxes. could never have brought
himself to declare that such use Of
government was a fraud, a robbery
or unconstitutional. There Is nothing
in the platform on which he was placed
this year that conflicts with his notions.
and there is no inconsistency In his
accepting whatever there is of honor
in the nomination. He can be vice
presidential candidate Of q party call
ing itself Democratic this year with
out sacrifice of his business principles
of governmental protection of his bust
ness.
There is the same dolorous note in his
letter that one finds in all the letters,
speeches and writings of the sixteen
to-one aggregation. The gold standard
is the cause of all our woes, and the
baleful money power holds us gripped
firmly in its rapacious and cruel hands.
Evidently, although he does not ex-
pressly assert it, the only remedy is
the demolition of the gold standard
and the substitution of the silvery one
for 1t, remedy more adroitly masked
by his fellows under the pretense of
bimetallism. The impossibility of get
ting away from the gold standard, the
fact that the very proposition of six
teen-to-one involves, as it's base, the
proposition that, measured by gold as
the standard, sixteen ounces of silver
shall be equivalent to one ounce of
gold, does not seem to have yet dawned
upon the mind of the ship builder of
Bath. This is not surprising, for the
minds of the whole fraternity he be-
longs to are equally opaque. What
their proposition really and only
amounts to is that they Will change
the terms in which values shall be ex-
pressed, while the terms in which those
values will be measured remains the
same. We would have silver prices
and gold values should Mr.. Sewall be-
come vice president.
Mr.. Sewall need not have said that
1--WE have little need for history and
statistics and the studies of scholars"
His letter abundantly shows both his
disregard and his need Of them. In
no part does it exhibit this more than
in his arraignment of the distribution
of wealth as the result of the gold
standard and the Vaccinations of the
money power" Histories and students
tell us the limitations of governmental
power; that it can never create wealth
but only interfere with it's natural dis
tribution. 1t can take from some the
wealth they have created and bestow
1t upon others, but it cannot create
one cents worth with all It's power.
At no period in the history of the coun-
try did the federal government so little
interfere with the distribution of
wealth as between 1876 and 1861, and
in no period was there a more equable
distribution of 1T. We had almost no
millionaires and no tramps. We have
had thirty years Of arbitrary inter-
ference, under the guise of protecting
some wealth producers, and we have
millionaires galore and tramps in bril-
gades. Mr.. Sewall would continue and
expand this by adding still another
class of favored ones, the miners of
silver, augmenting individual wealth
and general poverty. Mr.. Sewall is not
Democrat.
ID. p. r. d., N. ID.
BY these initials are indicated the