Barbour County index. [volume] (Medicine Lodge, Kan.) 1880-current, 1904-07-20
WILLIAMS SHARP TALK.
Temporary Chairman of St. Louis Conven-
ton Makes Special Point of Exposing
Republican Claims That Party
Makes Prosperity

of paragraphs and u many schedules.
These duties affect vast number of in
terests which are often conflicting. If
necessary for our welfare, then of course
congress must consider the question of
changing the law as a whole or changing
any given rates of duty, but we must re-
member that whenever even a single
schedule is considered some interests
will appear to demand. a change in al
most every schedule in the law; and
when it comes to upsetting the schedules
generally the effect upon the country
would be ruinouss' Verify, two souls
with but single thought; two speeches
that read like one"
And that single thought so harmoni-
ously expressed is not to force sin
gle special interest to take it's lips from
the public breast for fear the public
finding them unnecessary might shake
them all off,
But to go on to the authoritative ut
terance of the republican party in con-
vention assembled. The platform, like
the temporary chairman's speech, deals
chiefly in the boast that the republican
party is responsible for everything good
which has happened. 1t also deals
much in ancient history. 1t did we'll to
go back so years ago. The present re-
publican party needs running start of
fully so years to enable the imagination
of the American people to jump over it's
present obstructiveness and it's evasion
Of live issues which lie in it's pathway
to success in this year of 1904. The plat
form in speaking Of the access of the
republican party to power after Mr..
CleVeland's second administration had
expired, uses this language: I'VE then
found the country, after four years of
democratic rule, in evil plight, oppressed
with misfortune and doubtful of the fu-
ture. Public credit had been lowered,
revenues were declining, the debt was
growing, the administration attitude
towards Spain was feeble and mortify-
ing, its standard of values was threat
ened and uncertain. Labor was unem-
ployed. Business was sunk in the de-
preston which succeeded the panic of
1893. Hope was faint and confidence
was gone" Suppose | paraphrase that
utterance by saying that when Mr..
Cleveland succeeded to the presidency
in March, 1893, after four years of re-
publican administration under Mr.. Har-
rison, the democratic party found the
country, after a long period of public
misrule and extravaganza, in evil plight,
oppressed with misfortune and doubtful
of the future. Public credit had been
lowered, the revenues were declining"
| The outgoing administration was pre-
pairing and had prepared to issue bonds.
A government deficit was confessed
The panic which had devastated the
world was relentlessly approaching our
| shores. A long saturnalia of extrava-
gance, public and private, and of reck-
| less speculation had been already fol-
! lowed by depression. Corn was burned
| for fuel in Kansas and elsewhere in the
/ west in 1890 and after Cotton was at or
! below the price Of production. The
acute reaction which we call panic was
| inevitably approaching, even before Mr.
| Cleveland was elected. Business was
| sunk in the depression" which preced-
| ed the panic of 1893. Labor was unem-
| ployed," or poorly remunerated in fac
| tory or field, especially in the latter.
Indeed, business depression, especially
in agriculture and the lack of adequate
remuneration for labor, taken together
| with the high prices Of manufactures
under the Mckinley act (high prices
| especially accentuated to public realiza-
ton by the contrasting starvation prices
of agricultural products which had be-
ued more or less persistently since),
| these constituted the chief Industrial
reasons in the public mind for turning
Mr.. Harrison and the republicans out
| and putting Mr.. Cleveland and the dem
| oerats in. To go on with the para
phrase: Under Harrison's administra-
ton for three years hope was faint and
confidence gone" The plight of the
people" was so desperate that, like
drowning men, they were Catching at
straws." Many nostrums were being
suggested. Agrarianism and state So
cialism in the shape of subtreasury and
other schemes were rife from 1890 and
thence on. The two old parties" as
they were called, were blamed for it all,
but the one in power was blamed most.
| hence the out of power got in. Men adj
vocating these nostrums, in the state
of public desperation then existing,
counted their audience throughout the
suffering west and depressed south, no
longer by numbers but by the acre.
Who will deny the historical truth of
a single sentence of the paraphrase?
Why pretend to have forgotten all this?
| Why not be honest with the people, as
men ought to be? 1t is true that after
the election of Mr. Cleveland the
chronic business depression continued.
1t is true that it became acute; in word
reached the banks-and then the fright
or panic of 1893 came, which was not a
local or American condition, but one
which had existed from where Vienna
nestles on the Danube to where Buenos
Ayres commands its bay, one whose
foundations had hean laid long before II