Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1898-10-20
THE ISSUE OE ISSUES.
What the Republican Party Has
Accomplished.
JOUR- COUNTRY AS 1T IS
There Should be No Slip Backward
Into the Ouagmire of Dem
ocracy and Ruin.

The New York Press, in commenting
upon the platform adopted by the recent
New York Republican state convention,
has this to say of what the party has
accomplished since the Republican ma
tional administration came into power,
and what remains for it to do in the in
terests of commerce and industrial pur-
suits:
Yet all these declarations, commend
able as they are, on the Spanish war
and the acquisitions of Spanish territory,
on the currency and the tariff, might be
summed up in one phrase: ''Our country
as it is" There is the all-comprehensive
issue of issues, and its full force and
meaning can't be realized by anyone pos
essary 10 the recollection of our country
as it was.
1t is no partisan boast, but plain polit-
zeal nara tive. which credits the Repub-
lican party with having crowded into the
year and half of the Mckinley admin
istration more diverse political accom-
pliShment and more of national regenera-
ton than any previous decade of the
country's history can reveal. 1t found
the country's fortunes almost at their
lowest ebb. The mere election of sound
money President and House did not re-
store business activity. A strenuous
summer of detailed and arduous legisa-
tive effort was necessary to set the wheels
of commerce and industry in motion. In
foreign affairs the party found itself con-
fronted by a situation which President
Cleveland, for all his confidence in his
own sufficiency to any question of state,
had undeniably shirked. OF that ques-
ton, viewed as almost insoluble by those
who watched the Republican approach
to its solution, nothing remains but the
harvesting of the fruits of victory in such
manner that the national economy shall
not suffer from an indigestibIe surfeit.
As to finance, the Republican party has
evolved out of the chaos succeeding an
election in which nothing was settled but
the rejection of the 50-cent dollar 2 pol
icy which will set the currency OF the
country beyond tho reach of demagogy
and dishonesty for all time. This policy
it proposes to execute at the next SEES
sion of Congress. Its leaders are pledged
to It, It's appropriate committee of the
House has prepared the way to it. This
very platform of New York Republican
ism, whose platforms on questions of
finance ever foreshadow the platforms of
the party nationally, specifically promises
it.
THAT nothing of this marvellous achieve
ment shall be undone, that no slip back
ward into the fearful quagmire in which
the latest Democratic chariOteer left
stalled to the hubs the wheels of state
shall befaII- and, moreover, that such
achievement sail continue until the great
questions of domestic and foreign affairs
now in train toward settlement shall be
disposed of. is certainly the first need
of the great republic for whose future the
bravest of us bad doubts in the so re-
cent past, and of which the weakest of us
are so proudly assured today. That is
the issue-to, keep our country as it is; to
keep our country from what it was; to
keep those hands shifting the helm and
trimming the sails which have ever taken
the ship Of state fearIessly out upon the
open and joyous sea-, to keep those hands
from wheel and sheet that have twice
within a generatioH-the last time only
yesterday-more than grazed the keel up
on the lee-shore of disunion and, again,
diShonor: