Daily inter mountain. [volume] (Butte, Mont.) 1881-1901, 1900-04-09
DEMOCRATIC FIGHT on LABOR.

PASoS ~ 4dA OAlSANol NoPANoA ~
of The Porto Rican question would be
ridiculous if it were not-as DR.. Rotwitt
would put it-so "cussedly absurd" When
the Paris treaty placed Porto Rico and
the Philippines under the American flag,
the bourbon organs walled long n loud
over the influx of pauper labor thereby
implied. American occupancy of. the
islands acquired as a natural and legiti-
mate sequence to the Spanish American
war, was bitterly condemned on the
grounds that the new order of things
would prove destructive to well paid
labor.
When our brave boys We're defending
the flag, which had been fired upon by
the treacherous Aguinaldo and his ban
dts, and the democratic press of Mon
tana and other states were pouring hot
shot from the copperhead batteries in the
rear, it was claimed by the newspaper
advocates of the rebel chief that victory
for the American troops mean ruin to
our industrial life. BY such arguments
they sought to arouse public sentiment
against the administration in the meas
ures taken to bring the war in the Philip
democratic leaders used every artifice at
their command to build up as ~disreputable
al anti-war party as cursed the country
in the dark days of the civil war. They
l~ Al1A l:.-:Ar, .~I o~o~
tige and honor-the sterling manhood of
our people-would never permit a dis
graceful retreat from territory legiti-
mately acquired through a treaty of
peace; but they hoped at the conclusion
of the war to point to the results as a
justification of the course of opposition
they had seen fit to pursue!
Had the democratic leaders been patri-
OTIS, as we'll as politicians, they would
have stood by the 1ag-right or wrong
until its assailants had been run to earth,
and then used their best endeavors to
shape the conclusions of peace to the in
~terests of all concerned. But such con-
sistency would have robbed them of their
personal prestige as democratic leaders.
eral troops in the Philippines, alleging
loyalty to American labor as an excuse,
they now seek to verify their position and
make prophetic the statement made, by
ures for the government of acquired ter
ritory.
In their opposition to the Porto Rican
J bill, and their insistence that 1.-THE con-
stitution follows the flag" they seek to
throw wide open the doors that would adj
init the pauper labor of the tropics to our
shores. To make good their claims, put
forth when the Paris treaty was signed,
they would gladly introduce an era of
competition with the cheapest imported
labor in the world. Having invited and
made possible conditions of this kind they
would cast the odium Upon the present
administration for doing it's duty in the
defense of our flag in the Philippines.
They would point to the fact that had all
our foreign possessions been abandoned
or our troops driven into the sea-labor
would not v been called upon to face
the new conditions imposed. But the
democratic scheme to make political CAPT.
tai at the expense of our Industrial life
failed of accomplishment.
The Porto Rican bill served notice on
copperheads of both high and low degree,
that the constitution follows the flag into
acquired possessions only within the dis
erection of the law-making power of the
United States. The republican party has
committed the congress to this principle,
and under it's operations pauper labor
will be as effectually barred from our
shores as if an American vessel had never
entered their ports.
Had the democrats been successful in
Porto Rico and the United States was a
constitutional right which congress could
not abridge, that body would have been
equally powerless to legislate against the
importation Oh cheap Iabor from n pOr-
ton of our newly acquired possessions.
In short. the attitude of the democratic
party in congress-, in support of the
euphonious but misleading proposition
that "the constitution follows the flag"
has supplemented it's career of "copper"
headism during the war period with an
attempt to undermine and destroy the
foundations of the American homo 40 ov.