The Mankato free press. [volume] (Mankato, Blue Earth County, Minn.) 1879-1924, 1905-11-17
COAT-TAlL HOLD.
Attempting to Hang to the
Presidents Garment.

Presidents Garment.
Men old enough to recall the Greeley
campaign remember how the merciless
Mast always pictured b. Gratz Brown,
Greeley's running mate, as tag tail
to Greeley's coat tail The pertinacity
with which our James Thompson Me-
Cleary asserts that he and President
Roosevelt are as one on the tariff Issue
recalls Nests caricature. Doubtless his
repetition of this absurd statement won
him some votes of uniformed republi-
cans last year in his contest with Mill
er for the nomination. We have now
to augment our regard for his audacity,
for he had the nerve to repeat the
statement before the Economic club in
Boston Thursday night. Boston must
have laughed, as it did when Senator
Quarles made his disclosure of ignOr-
ance about the English term ''corn." At
ter all, we are in doubt whether it is
a case of sheer audacity OF of the be-
wilderment of colossal egotism. We in
cline to the latter.
Anyway, he told the Bostonese that
on the the tariff he is Sin exact accord"
with the republican national platform
which later he intimated that he wrote
in his one minute speech-which we are
willing to admit, and that he is also
exactly in accord with President Roose-
welt on the same question, from which
the president himself would dissent
with vigor Mr.. McCleary long since
ranged himself with the ultra stand
patters. The tariff might need to be re-
vised upwards, he said. The president
proposed a radical downward revision in
two messages to congress. Not in eX-
press terms, it is true, but in words
whose only rational meaning was that.
For twice he suggested that in any re-
vision of the tariff the measure of pro-
lection should be sat least the differ
ence in labor cost of production here
and abroad. Mr.. Miller tried, and the
Dispatch tried, to get McCleary to say
whether he would accept that standard
or not, and we failed.
He knew better than to admit the
Roosevelt idea" of the standard by
which to measure the degree of protec-
ton that should be doled out to any of
the few remaining infants in our indus
tries. The president knew what he was
talking about. He is no greenhorn i'll
tariff studies. He knows what "labor
cost" is; knows that it has no relation
to wage cost; knows that our labor cost
is the lowest of any in the world; that
it costs any manufacturer, any produc-
er of anything in this country, less for
the labor spent on it than it costs any
competition anywhere outside of it.
And he knew that the adoption of his
standard would eliminate protection all
QOWn Tile lille Vi Ulc SCuCuuiCo.
And the Little Schoolmaster of the
Second district knows it, too. He, too,
has studied economics; once held and
taught sound doctrines in it. But that
was before he became scholar in
politics" and felt the potency of protect
ed Understanding some insurance
interests-in campaign funds for those
who helped them in congress. He knows
as well as the president does what the
labor cost standard means and what its
abortion would mean. So he kept silent
when Miller and the Dispatch was
prodding him with the Roosevelt idea"
and kept on, keeps on, shouting that he
and the president are exactly in accord.
We SHOULD acquit him of audacity and
even of his colossal egotism and attrib-
ute his claim of tariff affinity to his
eagerness to get for himself some OF the
presidents popularity. He is merely
clutching hold of Roosevelt's coat tail
to be pulled through campaigns.-ot'
Paul Dispatch.