The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1897-01-15
THE MODERN Bull. APIS.


The veneration in which the ancient
! Egyptians held their bull Apis reap
pears today in the as Inquestioning and
as stupid devotion of the average Re
publican editor to what he sincerely
believes is the divinely ordained insti-
tuition Of protection. To II he addresses
his mathis and his vespers; to it Is
due every good thing in private life or
public function. and when it's divinity
is questioned, he
Proves his doctrine orthodox
By apostolic blows and knocks"
He stops at nothing in its defense,
applying the JesuiticaI motto that the
end justifies the means. If perversion
of fact or history is needed he calmly
twists either out of shape and Grapes
it with his rhetoric. Mole hills be-
come mountains and vaporous clouds
resolve themselves into solid rocks at
the touch of his imagination Particu-
larly happy is he if he finds, or, what
amounts to the same with him, if he
| imagines he finds flaw in the orthO-
dOXy of those who deny the holiness Of
his bull Apis. Whether it be Jackson, the
sturdy, with his earlier flaws of Demo-
| cratic faith replaced by the solid ma
| terial of his later structure; or jefferson
! the f1awless, is immaterial 10 him; he
! magnifies the one and traces blemish
over the other with his murky ink with
| equal facility, and damns both for their
heterodOXy with indiscriminate impair
TALLY.
Saturated with this spirit we find the
Pioneer Press making history after the
fashion of its kind who draw upon
! their imaginatiOns for their facts. To
make of Jackson a protectionist it puts
him in the presidential chair five years
before he got there, approving a tariff
bill that was not enacted until three
years after his first inauguration. 1t
antedated Clay's compromise act Of
1892 eight years, and parades that first
retreat from Moscow of the protec-
tionists as a triumph of a policy that
found it's expression in the tariff Of
denominations" four years before, and
which Clay deliberately surrendered in
his compromise act
But its audacity mounts to the sub
lime when it dares to profane the mem
DRY of the man who wrote into the or
ganic law of the land-for such is the
Declaration of Independence-the char
ter of individual freedom, by asserting
that he was al ardent advocate of
protection in his day" Surely impu-
dent mendacity cannot so much farther
than this. It makes the man who wrote
that every man is under the natural
/ duty Of contributing to the necessities
Of government and this is all the laws
! should enforce on him." who expressed
a hope for the coming of universal free
dom of trade. IAN ardent advocate" Of
this survival in a republic of a method
and use of taxation devised by despots
to deceive and despoil. The man who
said in his first inaugural that one of
! his principles of government was "econ-
Omy in the public expense that labor
may be lightly burthened," was too
sane a mind to accede to the dogma
that the foreigner" and not domestic
labor. pays the tax
Equally perversive of history is the
assertion that protection has been
the policy of the American government
for 10Y years. 1t was the avowed pol
icy after the war of 1912, with it's prac-
teal protection in the exclusion of
competing imports, had stimulated the
greed of the manufacturers for con-
! tinuance, and the policy eliminated in
| the tariff Of denominations in 1928
steady descent to a revenue basis by
; 1912, scheme checked by the
panic Of 1887, as promptly talk
en- advantage of by the protec-
! tionists as was the panic of 1893
1t had temporary revival in the tariff
of 1912, but gave way to the revenue
only policy which covered a period to
whose tranquil prosperity and even dis
tribution of wealth even Blaine paid
tribute The War of the Rebellion gave
again to the protectfonists their oppor-
tunity to revive their policy of loot.
immensely increased by the increased
cost of imports on account of the de-
probation of the currency