The Mitchell capital. (Mitchell, Dakota [S.D.]) 1879-1918, 1904-09-23
WHAT 1T MEANS.
The Significance of Vermont
Victory

The Significance OF the Vermont
Victory.
While it would be the sheerest folly
for Republican gers to accept the
Vermont victory as a certain augury of
Roosevelt's election next November, or,
to relax III their efforts to insure that
result, it canno be denied that the 3D.
OOO plurality is Il most reassuring and
significant fact. That this is so is not
because a succession of statistical coin
cidences where a shrinkage of the Re-
publican plurality in Vermont in Sep
TENDER has presaged a national Demo-
cratic victory IN November. but because
the influences affecting the individual
units in one State in this election are
national in their nature and are effective
throughout the republic.
If the issue in the November election
were confined to the tariff question it
would be impossible to infer from Eer-
mont's $4,000 Republican plurality
what would be the drift in New York,
Connecticut or Indiana. because the vo-
tors of these three States study the
tariff question through very different
spectacles from those of the farmers of
Vermont. From the day in 1861 when
her late Senator Justin S. Morrill, in
troduced the war revenue tariff measure,
which bore his name in the House of
Representatives. Vermont has never way
cred in her support of the Republican
policy of protection. Other States have
wobbled, as the politicians have played
upon the credulity of their industrial
classes, but Vermont has stood as firm
as her w everlasting hills.
But in the present campaign the
Democracy has chosen to thrust its ira
ditional clamor for free trade into the
background and has arrayed itself
against the American spirit of aggres-
Slve. progressive expansion, of which
Theodore Roosevelt is the living en-
bodiment.
To-day the Republicans stand for ma
tional action, Advancement and life; the
Democrats for national inaction, retro
g~ression and death. The issue is between
DOING and DON'T.
Such an issue appeals to voters in
Vermont precisely as it appeals to those
OF Oregon or Arkansas. The restricted
local view and interest is swallowed up
in the broader prospect. and men vote
as Americans and not as citizens of this
or that State.
10 this issue Oregon last June re-
sponded go ahead.' and Vermont mere
ly ecnoes zach across the continent Go
ahead"
Even Arkansas shows signs of waking
from the lotus-eating dream of Demo
cracy that a nation can advance with
out eSertion and force by marking-time
i'll front of the marble e1ligies of Jeffer-
son and Jackson, who il they were alive
would be marching in the ranks of action
and progress.
This, then, is the significance of the
Vermont election. THAI on the issue CON
tanned in the word "Forward.' persona
fed, if our opponents will have it so,
in Theodore Roosevelt, represented in
every line of financial, industrial and
diplomatic achievement, demanding in
creased expenditures for the army, the
navy, the postal service and every de-
partment of government care of the
peoples interests-Vermont represents
the onward trend of American thought.
This. and not the mere fact that Yer
mont Went Republican by $4,000 votes,
gives an assurance of a great Republi-
can victory next November.