The Sauk Centre herald. (Sauk Centre, Stearns County, Minn.) 1886-current, 1905-11-23
CONGRESSMAN MeCLEARY'S
BOSTON SPEECH.

uc pObtudStCl OuiIOio Va w
second district, together with thos
! who hope to be postmasters, ais
the Paramount Sentinel, the ables
democratic paper in southern Min
nesota, last week published the full
text of Congressman's McCleary'
speech on tariff revision made
before the Boston Economic Club
delivered on Nov. 9Th. (Sterotype(
plates furnished on request. This
speech is reply to one made by
Governor Cummlns of Iowa, in
favor of tariff revision on the same
occasion. The ''stand pat' organs
gleefully proclaim that the "Little
Schoolmaster" squashed the theories
of Governor Cummlns as thoroughly
as the harvest field grasshopper is
squashed when stepped on by the
No. IL brogan of the farmers hired
man. Whether this is true or not
we have no means of determining
as with characteristic partisanship
the "organs" published the reply in
full without publishing single
line of the speech to which he
replied. If this report is correct
and the revision arguments of Gov.
Cummins were annihilated he must
have made an exceedingly purile
effort for the logic of Mr..
McCleary's reply is as weak as
boarding house coffee that one has
to prop up with spoon on each
side of the cup in order to keep it
from topping over. Mr.. Nc
Cleary's first statement is that he is
in line with the republican platform
and quotes as follows:
owe insist on the maintenance
of the principle of protection and,
therefore, rates of duty should be
readjusted only when conditions
have so changed that the public
interest demands their alteration. !"
Under this elastic declaration of
the question of the last Republican
National convention, the republican
party stands pledged to revision
of the tariff whenever conditions
demand the same and the only
question is whether the time is now
for such revision.
With an assurance that is
absolutely sublime he claims he
stands with President Roosevelt
because the President has not
specifically called for revision by
message. We do not know, nor
does any living man know, just how
the President stands on this aues-
ton. We apprehend in the near
future that he will make his views
known in manner that all may
understand. But whether he
sustains our view or that of Mr..
McCleary does not settle the ques-
ton. We yield to none in our
admiration of our vigorous and
strenuous president but we have not
yet arrived at that stage of man
worship that we are willing to
subscribe to the doctrine that "be-
cause Roosevelt says so it is right. :"
Mr.. McCleary says, and says
truly, that there are thousands of
items in the tariff law but he knows
that neither tariff revisionists or
the masses of the people are
interested in more than dozen of
these items.
He points to the great increase
of our foreign trade. The only
reason in the world that we have a
foreign trade is because we sell the
commodities that make up that
trade cheaper in the foreign markets
than the foreigners do. If the
foreigners could undersell us we
would not get the trade and if the
reason of this underselling is at the
expense of an exhorbitant price to
American buyers it strikes US that
we are paying dearly for our
whistle.
For example if steel rails are
dearer in Europe than in the United
States as Mr.. McCleary attempts to
prove by carefully prepared tables,
it is the heighth of nonsense to