Wheeling register. [volume] (Wheeling, W. Va.) 1878-1935, 1900-03-05

right perddy to another land WhNh -
Gently has come under American rule.
BY an inevitable comparison of the
Puerto Rico and Hawaii bills the peo-
pie OF the United States are enabled
to see at a glance the whole infamy
forced upon the Republican party by
its representatives in the lower House
last Wednesday.
Why do we redeem our pledges to
extend liberty, prosperity, and equal
rights to Hawaii and not to Puerto
Rico? Why do we open our arms tc
the islands of the Pacific and turn our
| backs on the islands of the Atlantic
Why have we nothing but imperialism
for an island for a few hundred miles
from our shores while we confer the
gift of territorial government upon the
islands in mid-ocean? Why do we
wantonly violate our promises and our
obligations to the one and gladly full
fill them to the other? Why do we
follow the traditions of the American
people for our possessions to the west
and cast them into the sea with our
possessi,ns to the east?
Why do the Republicans in Congress
thus stultify the nation? Why do
they do it? Aye. there's the rub.
They do it, openly and avowedly, in
full view of the whole country, for
the simple and the sole reason that a
bare handful of lobbyists, representing
the sugar and the tobacco interests in
the United States, and these interests
alone, have demanded this sacrifice of
the nations welfare and the Republi-
can party's future.
The atrocity of the situation needs
only to be stated to be realized, and
only to be realized to be everlastingly
condemned. The spectacle of Repub-
lican Congress yielding up results of
the war, endangering the success of the
whole expansion policy, and fastening
upon Republican administration the
stigma of bad faith on the one great
question by which it must stand or
fall in the next election-and all this
at the behest of two protected mercan-
tile interests enough to make the
most steadfast Republican tremble for
the future of his party.
No national organization in this
country has ever been sufficiently pow
erful to resist long the force of the
conviction which such revelation
must carry to the hearts of it's mem
bers. No party which has surrendered
itself body and soul to any one or two
material interests whether the inter-
est of shareholders or the interests of
stockholders-has long survived the
exposure Of its folly. And if through
the blindness and perversion of it's rep
resentatives in Washington to-day the
Republican party bend the whole des-
tiny of this country to the demands
of two industrial enterprises, thrust
back into the hands of the copperheads
the very weapons which have been
wrested from them at infinite pains by
loyal press and a loyal people, and
imperil the whole future of the expan-
sion policy by stamping on it the trade
mark of oligarchical imperialism. then
we may we'll fear that the time is at
hand to write on the walls of the cap
itol that this party has been at last
weighed in the balance and has been
found wanting.
But we cannot believe that it has
come to this. We cannot believe that
the protests of the Republicans in the
middle West, which are now being
hurried by the thousands to the Rep
resentatives and Senators in Washing
ton, will be ignored. We cannot be-
lieve that either William Mckinley or
the United States Senate in this emer-
gency will fail to heed the voice of the
nation, as they have needed it day by
day and week by week ever since the
destruction of the Maine in Havana
harbor.
Their responsibility is a grave one.
1t is responsibility that has in it the
weightiest results for the future of
the United States, and, it is not too
much to say, tremendous consequences
for the Republican party in this Pres
idential year. May they open their
ears to the voice of the American peo-
pie, grasp the situation with the sa-
gacity which has been theirs in the
past, and wrench the cause of national
expansion out of the reckless hands
stretched forth to throttle it!