The Montgomery advertiser., 1905-04-26

Washington Post,
 The discontinuance of the coinage of silver on private account In the hints of Mexico is more than the driving of the last nail in the coffin, it is tamping down the last sod on the grave of an issue that was prominent in American politics for more than quarter of a century, an issue that was often exciting and at one time danger ous-not that 1t threatened revolution ary. violence, but because it1was re- garded as tending to corruption of the currency, and, therefore, to panicky business conditions and national dls- grace.
 The only thing that can be said to the credit of the Republican party re- garding its treatment of that issue IS that it was, at every stage of the long conflict, nearer to safety and sanity than the Democracy. The only fact in the protracted drama that can be so construed as to reflect credit on the Democratic party is that a Democratic President set himself against the dom inant sentiment of his party and at great Rersonal sacrifice saved his conn. try from the threatened calamity But the Democracy, as a party, forfeited It's right to any honor accuring from President Cleveland.s heroic patriot ism. The party deliberately chose to fight the campaign of 1S96 for free and unlimited coinage at Is to 1. And the influences, that dictated the nomination ously near to inaugurating and prose- cutting a campaign of timidity and eowardice on the all-absorblng ques- tion-a campaign that would nave ended in defeat, would have brought in Bryan and free silver, and substl- tuted calamity for the splendid pros- perity that has prevailed since and as standard that was won by and with the assistance of President Cleveland and his intrepid following.
 Few chapters in our history that n1 d1fu n npapQfiIl times nOS- sess so much of real commanding in- terest as the story of the struggle for and against sound currency In the last quarter of the nineteenth century. eadet dt was virtually ended in November, 1896, but a blind leader of the blind prefer red to make use of its eadaver, and his Democratic adherents gratinea t tnat erous toward that leader in the St. Louis convention of 1904 that the olu, dead issue, the issue whose. grave has been sodded in Mexico, still stands as the latest official declaration of Dem- oeratic policy.
 1t seems to us a good time again to remind the leaders of the Republican party, the only party from which sate financial legislation might possibly De expected, that they have not taken q single forward step, since with the aid of the Clevelan5 contingent, they won the gold victory of 1896. They all know that much remains to bel done before our currency laws will be safe or our so-caller currency system any thing but lot of misf1t patchwork; They all know that the gold standard act of 1900 is fatally defective, and that our immense accumulation of oO- cent dollars is a reproach to the na- tion. But. as The Post has said in previous discussions. the Republican party appears to have fiunked on cur rency reform. In 1897 it numbered in the index tremendously; in several suc- ceeding years the laundering was heard. But nothing came of 1t, and the suspicion of a funk is fully con firmed. But Tn God We Trust" since we can't depend on Republican states manship to deliver us from the Tterils that our currency situation renders quite too easily possible.