Iron County register., 1899-04-13
THE ADVANCE AGENT.
False Pretensions OF the Head Rec
ons1aender of the Repub-
lican Party.

The adorers of the advance agent's
scout the suggestion that the improve
/ ment insindustrial and trade conditions
which we have been experiencing can
be due to anything but the triumph OF
the republican party and the effects OF
| republican policy under the all but oln-
niscient and omnipotent Mckinley. To
Mckinley and the party which is in
| spired by his superhuman spirit they
give all the praise for big crops and
high prices and the busy factories and
loaded railroad trains that follow after
big crops and high prices. But there
are some things of which they have
very little to say, because, while logical
ly they are as much due to Mckinley
and the party as is our present boom,
they are not altogether subjects OF re-
joicing. AT least we have not advanced
so far in our imperial contempt for in
ferior peoples" as to regard them as
subjects of rejoicing.
One of these things was the recent
famine in India. By reason of the
drouth India, so far from producing
surplus of wheat for export, became
a consumer of the surplus foodstu1fs
of other countries. A natural result
was an advance in the price of wheat.
If then we must give Mckinley and the
party all the praise for prosperity we
must logically give them the glory for
the famine in India and incidentally
for the bubonic plague. Another OF
these things is the famine in Russia
In cable dispatch Henry Norman
hn fa min Z a
scale which Europe is only just begin
ming to realize. All the provinces of the
middle Volga district, thousands of
square miles in extent and in the CEN
ter of the empire, are on the verge of
starvation" He adds that in some
localities the seed wheat supplied by
the government has been used for food
and that by the admission of the Rus
sian Red Cross society % per cent. of
the destitute have no prospect of any
official assistance and must either be
supported by private charity or die.
This state of things in Russia, which,
after the United States, is the chief
source of cereal supply for those Eu-
ropean countries which depend more or
less upon importations, would natural
ly account for the maintenance of
prices in face of the increased product
of this country. 1t would naturally ac-
count for the fact that our exports OF
breadstuffs continue to be so extraor
binary. 1t follows that if Mckinley
and his party are to be credited with
our prosperity they must also be held
responsible for the famine in Russia.
1t will occur TO people who take sober
views of such things that a political
party in the United States cannot rely
implicitly upon famines in other lands
to produce prosperity for it's honor
glory and profit just at the times when
it stands in special need of these things
for electioneering purposes. Normal
conditions are pretty sure to be re-
stored in Russia and India and TO con-
tinue for considerable number of
years. Indeed, it is more than possible
that the Siberian railroad will open up
new and fertile regions of great extent,
capable of producing large surplus of
small grains and of making Russia a
more formidable competitor than ever
IN the grain market of the world.
Even if we have nothing more than
restoration of normal conditions there
will be an end of famine prices for food
stuffs and relapse to something like
the prices which prevailed in the years
of worldwide plenty not long ago.
Then it will not be so easy for the re-
publican party to make people believe
in the prosperity-producing magic
either of the tariff or of policy of inn
perial dominion. Indeed, it is not i'm
possible that a revulsion and fall
back into the dumps will disclose to
the perceptions of even the dullest citi-
zen the falsity of the pretense that the
party runs the greatest
show on earth and that Nc
Kinley is either its advance agent or its
Barnum.-Chicago Chronicle.