The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1896-07-13
RIVER AT s A A. M.
A WORD OF WARNING.

1t is no particular concern Of ours
this year or any other. 1t is of con-
siderable concern to the country, how
ever, what becomes of the sound
money issue, and how that shall be
fought out to its final decision in No
vember. We wish to state now a fact
which is obvious to every man who
has not lost his reason and his capa-
bility for judging political movements
and probabilities; and this is that, with
the present attitude of the Republi-
ca party and press, the defeat of Mr..
Mckinley is as we'll assured as any flu
ture event can be. If the policy and
method of campaign with which the
candidate himself and his principal
champions through the country have
started out to maintain are pursued
then the country might just as well
make up8its mind now to accept the
free coinage of silver. $3.50 '".
The truth is that the Republican
party stands with reference to the com
ing election exactly where the Demo-
cratic party stood six months ago with
reference to it's national convention.
The Democrats of the Eastern states.
and good number of the West, for
that matter, could not be induced to
believe in the possibility that free sill
yer might control. They went around
with naughty noses stuck away into
the air and shifted CONTEMPORARY at
free silver fools" fanatics" ''crack
Drained visionaries," and all the other
epithets which they are pleased to
apply to the advocates of free silver. at
16 to 1. They assumed and asserted
that the Democratic voters were not
such idiots as to send a two-thirds
majority of silver men to Chicago.
Therefore, they went quietly about
their business, trusting to general
principles and the goodness of the
Almighty. They did not raise a hand
to make the situation what 1t ought
to be until it was too late. They
could have carried two-thirds of the
Chicago convention for sound money if
they had begun in time as easily as
they carried New York state. They
failed to make the fight until the Ru-
btcon was. passed, and the Demo-
cratic decentralization and defeat is
the result.
AS far as we can see. the
Republican party is preparing to help
repeat a precisely similar blunder. 1t
keeps hammering away it's tiresome
nonsense about the tariff, when no
body is thinking of tariff or talking
tariff, or is likely to between this and
next November. With the whole coun-
try seething in the midst of financial
agitation, the Republican organ comes
UP smiling with statistics of treasury
deficits that are manufactured out of
whole cloth, and are set forth brazenly
In their contradiction of official fig
ures. This is the sort Of food 1t offers to
men who. if they are going to vote the
Republican ticket this year, will vote
it under protest and on the money
question; and whom any kind of dis
honesty, but particularly tariff dis
honesty, will anger and repel
Let there be no mistake about it.
McKinleyism is not in a majority this
year. There are not enough voters in
this country today who regard a high
tariff as of the first Importance to
carry quarter Of the electoral votes
of the states IN the face Of the battle
of the standards. What has to be
done between this and next November
is to conduct a campaign of education
on the financial question that will
need to. be without a parallel In its
thoroughness and daily persistence.
If the voters Of the United States are
not informed aid drilled into complete
mastery of at least the fundamental
principles of right finance within the
next four months. then there will be
o free silver president and a free sill
yer majority in congress-. The man
who blinks at facts because they do
net please him may be Fit for a mon
astery, but he has no place in this
busy and practical life Of ours. The