Staunton spectator and vindicator. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1896-1916, 1905-10-13
FOR HOUSE OF DELEGATES.
SILAS H. WALKER.
JOHN W. COUNCILMAN.
sTAUNTON'S DISTINGUISHED VISITOR

We were very much houored last |
week by having in our midst Mr.. Les
lie M. Shaw, a member of President
RoOsevelt's cabinet, and Secretary of
the Treasury of the United States.
Mr.. Shaw came on tour of educa-
tiOn. He found the State of Virginia
in so far as its Democratic masses are
concerned ignorant, very ignorant, on
the great questions of the day. and he
dropped in to enlighten them. Ut
course the white Republicans and the
ringers" have long been enlightened,
they have voted right, but the Demo-
Gratis are ignorant and need education.
Mr.. Shaw does not strike us as q great
man, but he does strike us as an ex-
ceedingly interesting man in a way.
He has the manner of the lecturer OF
today. Some have said that he put
them in mind by gesture and speech OF
the patent medicine vender. This is
putting it too strong. He is above
that. far above the average of that
stamp, but we have seen and heard on
the lecture stage and at the CHATEAU
quas, many men exactly like him. We
could not believe,0 or work ourselves up
to the opinion that We were listening
to one of the GREAT men Of this ma
tiOn. just why this was, arose some
what from the fact that be spoke more
to catch the crowd than to present
great truths. 1t also came about In
part from the fact that he reached
Stanton about the time Col. Campbell
Slemp and his son g. Bascom Slemp
got here, and be found himself with
them. Men are judged by the company
they keep. both morally and intellec-
tually. Having heard Col. Slemp and
seen G. Bascom, we may bear too hard
on Mr.. Shaw when we rate him by such
intellectual society, for if ever two
weak people starred State "the only
Republican Congressman from Vir-
ginia" and his son strike us as the
limit AS well might we hope to gather
grapes from thOrns and figs from this.
ties as to derive intellectual pabulum
from those two sources.
MIR. Shaw's talk was largely on the
tariff. He spoke on the same day
or the day before the Massachusetts
Republican convention declared for
TARIFF REVISION. Evidently he had
not heard of this or at least did not
mention 1t. From Mr.. Shaw's view
point everything good comes from a
high tariff, and everything bad from
low one. He shows some old statistics
when horses. hogs and cattle sold
under the hammer at very low prices
way out in Missouri. This was prior
to the war, and possibly the debtor
whose stuff was being sod was buying
it in, or his wife or some member of
the family was doing so. This told us
nothing, and contained no argument.
Of course he told of Cleveland prices"
when wheat got down to so cents, but
even then be did not tell that in 1888
when Harrison was elected wheat was
81, end Cleveland turned over to him
an overlooking treasury. In four years
Harrison had printed bonds to borrow
money, wheat was falling in price and
so were other articles, and when
Cleveland was Overwhelmingly elected,
as he was in 1892, he found the treas
ury empty, and a panic impending
which would have come as surely
under Harrison as under Cleveland,
and though desperate and direful could |
not approximate the panic of 1873 un.
der Grant and high tariff.
The only thing which kept Mr.. |
Shaw from referring to panlcs and
hard times except when the Demo-
Gratis we're in control, was his deter
mination not to do SO. Not that they
have not existed. Mr.. Shaw had a pref |
ty story he told about the tariff pro-
tecting the workmen so that they could
get good wages and then send their
wages to Iowa and buy bread, but he
failed to mention how protection had
left the workmen without homes, whilst
Mr.. Andrew Carnegie gathered from
the consumers nearly 500 million dol.
lars on account of protection to his
steel. Protection is the unnatural, free
trade is the natural condition. 80
many forget that nature never made
any tariff laws. Nature tried to give