Washington standard. [volume] (Olympia, Wash. Territory) 1860-1921, 1897-01-01
THE SHAM ISSUE.
SIMPLY BEATING OLD STRAW TO
RAISE A DUST.
The Oldest Newspaper In the United
states shows the Fallacy of Re-
publican PrOmiseS-Internat
al Bimefallism a Hollow Pre-.
Hartford Courant.

| a HkOhIOW fIes
tense.
Hartford Courant.
Last week a caucus of Republican
Senators gratified Mr.. WOlcott o
Colorado by authorizing the caucus
chairman (Mr. Sherman) to appoint q
committee on international bimetal
lism." The names of the committee.
men were announced two days later
Mr.. Wolcott is the Chairman. As.
sOciated with him are Messrs. Hoar OF
Massachusetts, Chandler of New
Hampshire, Gear of Iowa and Carter
of Montana. WOlcOtt and Garter are
free-coinage men who didn't bolt
Chandler is the noisiest friend Oi
silver" in republican New England.
Mr.. Hoar went abroad last summer,
met several advocates of the "double
standard" and came back considerably
impressed with the things they had
told him. What effect the recent ed.
ucational campaign has had upon Mr..
Gears sentiments we don't know.
These five Senator's are now engaged
in devising legislation for the bringing
about of another international none
tary conference on the silver question.
This means another tedious threshing
of the old straw when their bill or res
olution comes up for action. Chair
man Wolcott has explained that the
idea is so to fix things that President
Mckinley can issue his invitations for
the conference next March. We shall
see later whether discretion in the
premises is left to President Mckinley
or whether he is required to issue the
invitations.
When the ballots were counted last
month, the people in this part of the
country-and, we think, in other parts
of the country-hoped they were at
last to have crest" on the silver
question. They thought they were
fairly entitled to it, and that that was
what the election of Mckinley and the
defeat of Bryan meant. Their under
standing of the matter was that the
country had declared for the gold
standard, deliberately and with an
emphasis, and that that settled it.
The news that these Senators at
Washington are already at work to
reopen the question, start up agitation'
and renew the old, dreary, sterile de-
bates, makes them tired. They regard
international bimetallism," under the
actual conditions, as a humbug, an
illusion, a chase Of. jack-o'-lantern. AS
they look at it, the programme is to
waste time in Senate and House to no
purpose, to keep alive a costly and
dangerous controversy, to present the
infationists with a lot of fresh ammu-
milton for the campaign of 1900, with
the certainty of finding ourselves at
the end Gas far as any international
agreement is concerned) precisely
where we are now. 1t is not a pro-
gramme that commends itself to con-
servative people, nor to practical, SEN
sible people.
1t is quite true, unfortunately, as
Wolcott, Chandler and the rest of them
say, that the makers of the st. Louis
platform undertook to commit the
party to the promotion of the free
coinage of silver "by international
agreement with the leading COM
mercial nations of the world" Every
body knows the history of that. Pre-
vious national conventions had put
similar pledges" into their platforms.
The timid, compromising politicians,
who were in shivers over the discovery
that the words "the existing gold
standard must be preserved" were going
into the st. Louis platform in spite of
them, needed a restorative. 1t was
also thought clever politics to throw
this little skillet-one can hardly call
it tub-to the silver whale. We all
know what the result was. Bryan
went from one end of the country to
the other, shouting that the Repub-
lican party had not dared to uphold
the gold standard as good thing, but
had described it in the st. Louis plat
form as thing to be got rid of just as
soon as the cooperation of other
countries in discarding it could be
secured. Mr.. Wolcott says that the
bimetallism clause in the platform
saved great many votes to the party.
Our belief is that hundreds of thou
sands of conservative citizens-not all
Of them residents of New England or
New York-voted for Mckinley in
spite of it, and heartily wishing that
it wasn't there.
But observe! That clause only
pledges the party to promote an inter-
national agleement-not to instruct
the Republican President to convoke
an international conference. The last
such conference was convoked by an
American President. Nothing was
agreed upon, nothing was accomp.
lished. 1t is some other country's
turn to call the next conference. Oh.
serve further that the coinage agree