The Saint Paul globe., 1897-11-15
DINGLEY As PoDsNAP.

The Home Market club, of Boston,
has had its dinner and, of course, its
arter-dinner speeches. It is seven years
now since the club had just such an
other dinner with about the same cir
cumstances contributing to the jollity
of the occasion. Subsequent dinners
they have had; but there was shadow
over the feast, and a eruesome note ran
through the speeches. We are not so
vengefuI that we begrudge the club
two dinners in seven years at which no
reins are put on jollity and when eX
uberance is uncorked. It was at the
dinner seven years ago that the club
felicitated itself and the few others on
the passage of the Mckinley act, and
the contemplation of the extra divi-
derds that were to result naturally in
spired the members with what Holmes
called that "old particular warm,
champagney, brandy-punchy feeling"
regardless of other contributors to that
state of feeling. True, the November
elections had cast a sadness over the
situation, but there was the consola-
tion that anyhow there would be fat
picltings for four years anyway and
meantime something might happen.
The bright particular star of the
feast of soul and body this year was
the speech of the father of the re-
vamped and resurrected Mckinley act,
the Honorable Nelson Dingley Jr., of
Maine, better known to the mass as
Oingley Bill. Dingley opined that there
+v-ere lots of people who knew more
<lan they did a few years ago, a state
fment to which we will ask no excep-
tion to be noted, for we admit it.
There are, for instance, million Or
two Democrats in the land who know
much more about the game of polit-
ical buncO than they did even one year
ago, and they are all sadder and wiser
men. We mention this merely to illus
trate our agreement with Mr.. Dingley's
profound observation. We might even
venture the assertion that if these
Democrats had known as much a year
what they will learn within the next
few months, Mr.. Dingley would not be
making himself gay at a banquet of
the Home Market club this year, and
that highly respectable body of assist
ed capitalists would be still in a cave
of gloom. With this, of course, we do
not expect Mr.. Dingley to agree
But this is not what we started out
to say. Mr.. Dingley is to blame for
}the depression, for it was inevitable
Shat, when he suggested the increase
of wisdom which is the unearned but
r.learly paid for increment of the last
.-ew years, it naturally started
thoughts of those who had been learn
Gng. What we We're going to do was
10 call attention to the resemblance be-
tween the style of the man from Maine
and Mr.. Podsnap, whose way it was to
dispose of his adVersaries with a ma
rjestic sweep of the hand to the side
and rear Thus Dingley "disposes" of
those VINO dissent frcm the doctrine
that this much-taIked of and barely
palpa0le prosperity is wholly due to
the erac,1nent of the measure that will
go laundering down the ages as the
Dinglcy hill. The orasor left his free
trade friends to reconcile their various
coriicting diagnoses Of the cause
among themselves, and, with wide
sweep of the arm. he brushed them and
}thei.s aside and simply" remarked
that the common sense of the people
concludes that the repeated coincidence
between the protective policy and pros
fperity and between its overthrow and
adversely establishes the relation of
cause ard effect" Podsnap himself
could not have disposed of a contested
point more grandly or conclusively.
Unfortunately for our Podsnap his
condolences do not coincide To go
back no farther than the overthrow of
that policy by the Walker tariff of 1S46
let history pass judgment on his state
ment. 1t was nine years after that act
before a period of adversely came, due
wholly to land speculati0na growing