The Montgomery advertiser., 1904-05-10
RoosEvELr ,ANp rHE TARIFF.

hCCSENE ELF AND THE TARIFF.
 It has been our own opinion for long while >that the reform of the tariff would be the leading issue of the cam paign of 1904 We have never been able to believe for an instant that MT. Bryan by any process of irritation. of threats or defiance. could compel the Democratic Party once more to enter a campaign with the currency question at the fore front of things. Politics are bound to be related to something the average man takes an interest in and the average man has quit altogether talking about or caring for silver and cheaper dollar.
 If Mckinley had lived it was plain he was going to make an effort to bring the Republican Party round to sounder and more enlightened views of protection and Its consequences. His Buffalo address was distinct railying cry to the reform element of his party and at the same time g promise that the tarifY would no longer be treated in the narrow and selfish manner that had characterized not only the body of the organization to which he belonged. but himself as well. Mckinley had learned something. That Buffalo speech showed he had concluded the Republican Party had sinned against the light In maintaining for so many years a system of taxation by which the few were prospered at the expense of the many. And scegtainiy 1t would have had an impressive effect on American politics if he had lived to wage the fight he had so solefhnly inaugurated. The tariff gang was dismayed. They had been in ef- feet denounced by their chosen high priest and he was about to undertake to wrench the government from their con troll; from them, who had placed him in the. Presidential chair. When Roosevelt succeeded him the tariff gang may well have trembled still more. He was not late convert to tariff reform. He had been life long believer and he had pledged himself to carry forward Mo Kinley's announced policies. His promise and his convictions united to make him the enemy of the protective system of taxation. He proved easy game, how ever. He wanted to break every prece- dent by securing a nomination for a full term. No President called to the Presidency had ever done this. He wanted to be elected to that full term He has cut a sorry figure under the in- fiuence of these ambitions. He has thrown away all his professed opinions. He has threatened and groycled, he has strutted and bribed; he has marched for ward, backward, sideways and ever with his office and its tenure in mind Lodge is deep in his confidence. so is Quay. Platt advises, so does odell: Foraker and so did Hanna. The pulpit and the threatening goal alike yield him friends If they will only be friends in helping him to succeed himself. His boasted moral fibre is made of fair weather stuff In going through the wash of actual temptation and trial in a great office it is coming out a faded and bedraggled thing. The curious crowd he has gather ed round him, the political purists and political blacklegs all bent for one reason or another on maintaining a conscience less system of taxation can be likened only to that other famous administration so ':'checkered and speckled." He has indeed. put together a piece of joinery so grossly indented and whimsicallv dovetailed such tesselated pavement without cement-here a bit of black stone and there a bit of white-treacherou friends and open enemies, milking a curl ous show, but one the country will pro- nounce utterly unsafe to touch and un- sure to stand on. There they are, how ever. Crum and Grigsby, the saintly Bliss, the unspeakable Scott, Quay, Lodge, Grosyenor and Cannon, the whole motley array, crying for Roosevelt and more of your family's money as money for their families.
 Senator Aldrich professes to believe that the tariff and the tariff alone will be the issue this year; that the personali- ty of Roosevelt will not figure. Te ques- tion that personality as an issue is to affirm it. The Democracy will gladly welcome a contest as to whether your family's money shall be taken by law for my family's money, but they will not neglect an opportunity to set before the people the unstable and shifty character