The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1903-09-12
SATURDAY, SEPT. ~, 1903.
A SAD SPECTACLE.

Senator Hoar is in the melancholy
predicament of a man who has be-
come out of sympathy with his party
but who dare not leave 1t. He is too
old to change the associations of life
time. He is too honest to change
the convictions that he has held al
most as long. He has uttered the
voice of protest without avail; and
now it is saddening to hear him try
ing to find some sort of place of recon-
ciliation.
On the race problem he cannot, as
he says, find a word of reproach for
the South He will have no part in the
crusade against that section which
other leaders of his party are always
ready to preach, to the equal harm of
the white race and the black But
neither has he any solution ready to
suggest. Nay, he rather hints at COM
plicating and multiplying the prob
lem. All the races of the world, he
says, should come and will come at
their own free will to the United
States. We must give open entrance
to the Asiatic as we'll as the rest.
Realizing at last what race prob
lem is, how desperate its terms, how
promise with it, how the years intensity
instead of relieving it, the people will
think that one is enough. If there
were no economic objection, the mere
fact of the difference of race, with all
that it involves, would probably de-
termine them to keep closed doors
against the Asiatic.
His saddest confession, however, is
where he gives in allegiance at last
to the majority doctrine of his party.
He believes in tariff reform. He knows
that his state wants it. There is as
much need, he says of revising the
tariff as there is of revising the stat
utes of Massachusetts. But, he adds,
at the dictation of that party fealty
to which he had already sacrificed so
much of what is best and noblest in
his career, "the time to make those
changes is not In the year before
presidential election, but after a pres
idential election"
Here is a new gospel. What rate
of duty should be imposed on imports
is an economic and moral question.
If duties are too high, as Senator
Hoar knows that they are, the people
are doubly wronged. Money is taken
from them without warrant of any
public necessity and heaped UP in the
treasury Shelter is given to monop-
oily, within whose protection it grows
strong and outrageous. If a merchant
should see his business thus cumber-
ed, he would not think it necessary to
wait until after an election before re-
heving it. Why should a different rule
prevail here?
The time to revise the tariff is after
and not before a presidential election.
But why? Is there a single reason be-
hind that doctrine except the confessed
intention of the party in power to either
delude or disappoint the people ?
Why else refuse to act before an cleo
ton? If revision be necessary, as is
confessed, then they who perform it
will strengthen their own hands and
need not fear an appeal to the people.
If they do fear, what light does that
shed upon their projected perform
ance?
Or again: If the Republican party
believed that the session just before a
presidential election is, for some mys-
ferrous reason, a bad time to revise
tariff, why did they not do it before?
Heaven knows there was as much
need of it last session as there will be
next Why not do their duty then.