The herald., 1897-03-05
FRIDAY. nARcH S, 1897.
PRESIDENT M'KINLEY'S INAU.
GURAL

William Mckinley was duly invested
with the Office of president of the United
States yesterday, and, as is the custom
he delivered an inaugural address in
which he outlined the theories of gov
ernment which he will undertake to put
into practical operation.
Although Mr.. Mckinley is president
by the will of the majority of the people,
the minority are as deeply Interested in
the future of the nation and as anxious
that it should go from strength TO
strength in all the ways that conduce to
the betterment of the people as are the
majority; and, like the majority, they
awaited the new presidents first official
declaration ofprinciples in the confident
hope that he would show himself to be
q mighty statesman in whose strength
of character and honesty of purpose
the whole country could safely rely.
But that President McKinley's first
public utterance is disappointing in
tone, in sentiment and in general char
acter no fair-minded man will deny.
The burden of his theme is high
protection, as the only sound economic
principle of government, and the siIEle
gold standard as a proper basis for the
nations financial system. Around these
two propositions the threads of his in
augural twine and intertwine, but in
self-contradictory argument. The pres
ident insists that the tariff question is
and will continue to be paramount to
all others until the revenues are above
the expenditure account of the govern
ment; and he intmates that substan-
TALLY the schedules of customs duties
provided for in the act of 1890, common
ly called the Mckinley act" would
provide the required income; but he for
gets that he himself advocated that act
for the express purpose of reducing the
revenue, which it not only did reduce,
but failed by nearly $40, 900, 900 in the last
year of its operation to provide income
enough to satisfy the ordinary running
expenses of the government. To re-
enact a law in 1897 to do what it was
enacted in 1890 to prevent being done
would be an attack upon the capacity
Of the people for common business sense.
He says the severest economy must be
observed, which, in the face of the fact
that the Republican fifty-fourth con-
gress appropriated more money by over
$50000,000 than any other congress in
the history of the nation in times of
peace, sounds like an attempt at irony.
AS he warns up to his work, or ora
torical effort, he says the Republican
party has been in the past opposed to
all combinations of capital organized
into trusts or otherwise to control arbi-
trarily the conditions of trade" The
grim humor of this declaration will be
better appreciated when it is called to
mind that combinations of capital or
ganized into trusts" contributed SIC, ,O00.-
600 in the interest of Mr. McKinley's
candidacy for president, and that Sen
ator Chandler, a good Republican.
charged openly that the industrial
trusts spent s25o,ooO to secure William
McKinleys nomination from the s..
Louis conven.ion.'
For the sake of President McKinley's
reputation for truth and veracity, let it
be supposed he does not know that the
into trust" in the history of the United
States was born of the Morrill, high
protection bill. which was passed by a
Republican congress and approved by
a}Republican president in 1862, and that