The Lexington advertiser. [volume] (Lexington, Miss.) 1904-1985, 1904-08-18
Washington, DC, Aug. Is, 1904.

aihUHB tHc ioduoIS VI JHc uoHOCIdbil
party here, that the paramount issue
in this campaign is the personality
and the record of Theodore Roosevelt
He is 1T" He is the whole cheese
He dominates the republican party
and strides it like colossus. Let us
see if the record he has made will
bear out the assertion:
More absolutely than any of his
predecessors in office ever did, he
procured his own nomination. He
dictated the platform. He edited the
nominating speeches. He appointed
the campaign manager. He moved
his cabinet officers like pawns to meet
the exigencies of his game of politics.
By an act of Executive usurpation he
added many thousands of pensioners
to a roll already containing a million
names, in order to make votes for
himself-the first open use ever made
of the National Treasury as a party's
campaign chest.
He has glorifed war and threat
ened the future peace of the country
by proposing bullying overlordship
of the other countries in this hemis-
phere and offering to constitute the
United States the constable and col
Jlector for Europe in the rotten and
irresponsible states of Central and
South America.
He has, by his recommendations to
Congress and his signature to it's ex-
travagance, increased the national
expenditures during his term to more
than $2.500,0O0,000 AN excess of
$21l, 100000 over the expenditures
during President McKinley's' term
(which include the expenses of the
war with SPAIN, and exceeding the
cost of President Cleveland's second
term by $SS0,0O0,OO0.
He and the congress of his party
have converted a surplus of $50, ,000,-
QUO in 1900 into a deficit of more
than $4O,O0O,0OO for the fiscal year
just closed.
This extravaganza is encouraged,
and in fact made inevitable by the
high tariff and the policies of war
and imperialism of which he is the
most strenuous champion. The great
er the revenue from customs the
greater the revenue for lavish ex-
penditures. The more colonies and
dependencies we have the greater
the need of more warships, more for
tifcations, more coaling stations,
more soldiers. : Every high protec-
zionist is jingo, and every jingo a
high protectionist. These cardinal
features of the republican party are
intdrrelated and interdependent. They
stand to each other in the relation of
cause and effect.
In view of this surprising record
of extravaganza, it is perhaps not
strange, but will be regarded by the
taxpayers as significant, that the
words economy" "retrenchment"
and REFORM" once the rule Of the
nation and the shibboleth Of states
men, do not once appear in his entire
speech of acceptance ONCE.
He says in his speech of acceptance
that prosperity has come at home"
Are there not many thousands Of
workingmen who have great reason
to feel that prosperity is departing? |
Does the army of striking cotton op-
eratives, whose wages have been re-
duced 223 per cent since 1900, find
that wages are higher than ever be-
fore?" Do the tens Of thousands Of
employees dismissed by our great
railway systems share his roseate
view? Are the participants in or the
victims Of the strike against the ex-
actions of the Beef Trust throwing
up their hats over the full dinner
pailw
Deserving his early convictions in
favor Of a freer trade, he cultivates
the monopolistic campaign contribu-
tors Of his party by standing pat
for a tariff niger in its average duty
than the highest schedules Of the
war time "a tariff which the republi-
cans Of Iowa have declared to be q
shelter TO monopoly" which the re-
publicans Of Wisconsin demand shall
be revised in the interest Of con-
sumers, and which tens Of thousands
Of republicans in Massachusetts, and