Iron County register. [volume] (Ironton, Iron County, Mo.) 1867-1965, 1904-07-07
THE STAND-PAT PLATFORM.
Republican Enumeration Of "Prin-
ciples" Is an Insult to Intelli-
gence of the People.

The platform adopted by the republic
can national convention is fundament-
ally Bourbon. Nothing has been forgot
ten and nothing has been learned. All
the achievements of the past are tagged,
~catalogued and enumerated, but the flu
ture played Sc trivial a part in the de-
alterations of the convention that it was
all but ~disregarded.
Considered, however, merely from the
point of view of the stand-pat-let-well-
enough-alone republicans the platform
leaves nothing to be desired. To peo-
pie who paraphrase Napoleon's maxim
and insist that time and the republican
party can accomplish everything this is
an ideal platform, because it leaves
everything to time and the party. Every
where between planks is this admoni-
ton: Don't bother your blessed heads
about anything. We have already solved
all the political problems there are to
solve; but if any have been overlooked
we can be depended upon to solve them
as they ought to he solved"
1t is in respect to the Philippines and
the tariff that this masterpiece of
"stand-patism' will be most vigorously
and most ~righteously assailed. Not even
the vaguest promises of the most remote
independence for the Filipinos are made.
The convention curtly informs them
that they have the largest civil liberty
they have ever enjoyed and by i'm
plication tells them to run along and not
bother the government by asking for
anything more.
The tariff declaration, says the New
York World, is equally %patronizing. A
platform that refers to the Wilson law
as an act based on free-trade prin-
ciples" informs the people with an air of
superb economic superiority that ITO a
republican congress and a republican
president this great question can safely
be intrusted." This is to say that if the
republican machine and the protected
manufacturers think a revision of
schedules is advisable the tariff will be
"readjusted" by its friends. As all prev
ious r%evisions by the republican party
have resulted in higher schedules. this
"stand-pat' plank has a certain merit
that cannot be ignored. 1t threatens us
with no new burdens.
The least tariff we can possibly toll
crate, the convention tells us, must
measure the difference in the cost of
production at home and abroad. No
thing is said about the difference in sell
ing price of American articles at home
and abroad, by which the home consum-
er pays for extending the protected
manufacturers foreign trade. Neither
is anything said about the fact that the
greater productive ability of the Amer
lean workman has in many cases more
than overcome the relative diffeffrffence
in wages. There is no promise uttered
or implied that the Dingley schedule
will be reduced to a point that will meas
ure the difference between the cost of
production here and abroad. Even the
Chamberlain campaign for a protective
tariff in Great Britain to retaliate
against the United States and Germany
10 INloICu lIlO all dlSulllell III support
of the inviolability of the Dingley
schedules.
AS for reciprocity, the party that tore
up the Kasson treaties is willing to re-
ciproGte providing it can be done with
out injury to American agriculture
The part is greater than the whole. and
the interests of ali the people must not
be considered as against the least, least
trivial interest of any class or individual.
Foreigners that wish to trade with us on
living terms must produce something
that we cannot produce or initiate.
McKinley's admonition that I'VE must
not repose in fancied security that we
can forever sell everything and buy lit
tie or nothing" made no appeal to the
convention. Mckinley was long ago out
McKinleyed by his party. If he were
alive he could have had no standing in
the Chicago convention. Possibly he
would have been denounced as a free
trader-a Cobdenite at the very least.
The thing to do is to stand pat and fry
the fat.