The Scranton tribune. [volume] (Scranton, Pa.) 1891-1910, 1896-04-14
rlcKinley's Splendid Chance.

1t Is far from creditable to the ILL
nois supporters of Major Mckinley
that they should have felt compelled
to resort to falsehoods in their effort
to stampede the Republican voters OF
that state away from Senator Cullom.
The story, deliberately magnified by the
Chicago Times Herald and other Of
fetal and semi official Mckinley or
gans. that the Illinois senator had de-
cided to withdraw as a presidential
candidate and that his letter of re-
nunciation had already been written. Is
emphatically denied by Mr.. Cullom,
and therefore looks like one episode in
a studied conspiracy of Justification to
which we doubtless owe the earlier
falsehoods of similar import about Col
onel Quay. No doubt these stories
We're manufactured by irresponsible
persons, working on their own author
ity, and should not therefore be
charged against Major Mckinley. who
is thoroughly honorable and upright
man; but they are none the less to be
deplOred, for the only possible effect of
them will be to engender i'll feeling and
feed the fires of animosity.
1t would afford us pleasure to be able
to say with truthfulness that we be-
lieve the uprising for Major Mckinley
has been in all parts of the country a
spontaneous one, owing nothing to the
bosses; but We cannot say this. There
can be no possible doubt that so far as
Illinois is concerned it represents one
side in battle of the rankest kind of
factonalism, the chief purpose of the
men behind it being not to honor Nc
Kinley but to work his potent name so
as to humiliate a distinguished states
man who in ability, experience and ma
turity of powers stands probably as far
in advance of William Mckinley as
Mckinley stands in advance of a re-
spectacle nonentity like, say, Governor
Morton. The anti-Cullom conspiracy
in Illinois, masquerading as it does in
pharisaical pretensions Of superior po-
litical holiness and bowling anti-boss-
ism with the nervous energy of the
pickpocket crying stop thief" is as
little to the credit of the Mckinley
boom as 1t is vociferous in masking it's
fastional purposes in its vaunting of
the Mckinley colors.
If Major Mckinley wished to do a
graceful thing at a time when the need
- OF such a deed is apparent in his cam
vass, he could not choose better op-
portunity than Is afforded by the mis-
use to which his name is being subject
ed in Illinois. A letter to Herman II.
Kohlsaat or some other foremost leader
in the raid upon Shelby NJ. Cullom. re-
Questing him to desist from that un-
seemly contest and suggesting that
Illinois Republicans should, as matter
Of common decency, support for presi-
dent of the United States, so long as
he shall be candidate, their able SEMI
or senator, whose services to Republic
canism, covering the whole period of
Republicanism's existence, fully war;
rant such a compliment, would entire
ly remove from the public mind the
growing suspicion that Major Mckin-
ley is willing to acquesce in knock
down -and drag-out politics so long as
1t works to his advantage and that he
objects to that robust style of competi-
tion, only when 1t does not go his way
The obligations resting upon Illinois
Republicans to support Senator Cullom
are as weighty as were those once
resting upon Ohio Republicans with
reference to Senator Sherman. Major
Mckinley resented treachery to Sher-
man like man, and threw a nomina-
tion over his shoulder rather than prove
recreant to his pledge. The chance to
rebuke similar spirit of irreverence
and ingratitude in Illinois is before
him, and he can avail himself of It in
a way to make himself ten times more
popular than before.
RI 1,an