The Savannah morning news. (Savannah, Ga.) 1900-current, 1904-09-12
SAVANNAH MORNING NEWS: MONDAY. SEPTEMBER -. 1904


and without heed to any other consid-
| Grafton"
Differences in Policy.
In discussing some of the questions
| which the two parties in their plat
| forms take definite issue, Mr.. Roose-
| welt charges that Democratic triumph
would mean disaster to the country.
He again charges Democratic insin-
cerity, as he does in all questions of
| public policy, upon which the two par
ties disagree.
when we take up the great question
| of the tariff he says 1--WE are at once
| confronted by the doubt as to whether
our opponents do or do not mean what
| they say. They say that protection is
robbery and promise to carry them
selves accordingly if they are given
| power. Yet prominent persons among
them assert that they do not really
mean this and that if they come into
power they will adopt our policy as re-
CARDS the tariff; while others seem
anxious to prove that it is safe to give
them partial power, because the power
would be only partial, and therefore
they would not be able to do mischief.
| The last is certainly a curious plea to
| advance on behalf of a party seeking
! to obtain control of the government
Mr.. Roosevelt takes up what he calls
| the attempt to identify the question of
tariff revision or tariff reduction with
! a solution of the trust question. and
quotes from his Minneapolis speech in
! 1903, in which he said that the tariff
! affects trusts only as it affects all other
interests. 1t makes all these interests,
| large or small, profitable and its bene-
fits can be taken from the large only
under penalty of taking them from the
small also.
A Possibility.
Undoubtedly he says, at would
be possible at the present time to
prevent any of the trusts from re-
naming prosperous by the simple ex-
pedient of making such a sweeping
| change in the tariff as to paralyze the
industries Of the country. The trusts
would cease to prosper; but their
smaller competitors would be ruined
and the wage-workers would starve,
while it would not pay the farmer
to haul his produce to market. The
evils connected with the trusts can
be reached only by rational effort,
step by step, along the lines taken by
Congress and the executive during the
past three years. If a tariff law is
passed under which the country
prOspers as the country has prosper
ed under the present tariff law, then
If a tariff law is passed aimed at pre-
venting the prosperity of some of our
people, it is as certain as anything
can be that this aim will be achieved
only by cutting down the prosperity of
all of our people.
when our opponents speak of pro-
lection as robbery" Mr. Roosevelt
says, they must mean that it is i'm
moral to enact a tariff designed to
secure to the American wage worker
the benefit of the high standard of liv-
ing which we desire to see kept up in
this country. To speak of the tariff in
| this sense as robbery" he charges is
false. IF protection is indeed Job
berry, and if our opponents really be-
lieve what they say, then it is precise
" te the destruction and uprooting of
the tariff, and therefore of our business
and industry, that they are pledged.
When our opponents last obtained
power it was on a platform declaring
a protective tariff constitutional
and the effort to put this declaration
into practice was one of the causes of
| the general national prostration last
| ing from 1893 to 1897"
Touches Reciprocity Lightly.
The letter does not deal to any great
| extent with reciprocity. Our oppo-
nents,' Mr.. Roosevelt says, assert
| that they believe in reciprocity. Their
| action on the most important reciproc-
! ity treaty recently negotiated-that
| with Cuba-does not bear out this as
sertion. Moreover, there can be no
reciprocity unless there is a substan-
| tial tariff free trade and reciprocity
are not compatible. We are on record
as favoring arrangements for recipro-
| cal trade relations with other countries,
| these arrangements to be on an equita-
| Die basis of benefit to both the con-
tracing parties. The Republican par
ty stands pledged to every wise and
consistent method of increasing the
| foreign commerce of the country That
it has kept its pledge is proven by the
fact that while the domestic trade of
this country exceeds in volume the en-
| tire export and import trade of all the
nations of the world, abe United States
has in addition secured more than an
! eighth ~9 - export trade of the
| world, standing first among the ma
| tons in this respect. The United
States has exported during the last
seven years nearly $40, 900, 000, 900 worth
OF goods-on an average of half as
| much again annually as during the
previous four years when many of
| our people were consuming nothing
but necessaries, and some of them a
scanty supply even of these"
The Tariff Question.
| The letter goes on to exploit the bene-
fits of a protective tariff to every
class of people, the merchant, the man
ufacturer, the farmer, the wage work.
er, and quotes extensively from the
! census as to growth of manufactures
and the farming industry in support
of this claim. In winding up the
tariff feature of his letter Mr. Roose-
welt says:
American people, if they show their
usual practical business sense, will in
sist that when the tariff laws are
| modified they shall be modified with
the utmost care and conservatism. and
by the friends and not the enemies of
the protective system, and that they
cannot afford to trust the modification
to those who treat protection and rob
berry as synonymous terms"
In touching upon the promotion of
American industry, the letter refers to
the merchant marine as follows: at
is not creditable to US as nation that
our great export and import trade
should be well nigh exclusively in the.
hands of foreigners"
The Military.
AS to a reduction of the army, Mr..
Roosevelt saws:
AN army of $4,000 men is taking