The Leon reporter. (Leon, Iowa) 1887-1930, 1907-06-20
PARTY ISSUES IN 1908.

Mr.. Bryan is perhaps right IN his
forecast that the tariff, though always
AN important issue, will not be the
paramount issue between the Democrat
ic and Republican parties in the cleo
ton of President and Congress next
year.
1t is probable that on this question
the Republican party will shift Its
position close to the ground always
held by the Democratic party. The
Republicans will certainly declare for
the principle of tariff protection, and
they may be expected to add to this
declaration promise to revise the
Dingley act in the interest OF the masses.
The angry protests against the robber-
les of the Ding1ey act that are coming
from the rank and file of Republican
voters seem to make some such concess-
ion imperative.
By all traditions of the party the
Democratic platform will declare for
a revenue tariff, and it will be wise to
add the recommendation that the
sources of tariff revenue be chosen with
view to giving fair and adequate in
cidental protection to American indus
tries and to the people employed in
them. 1t might be well to go further
and add a provisio that any Industrial
product that is monopolized by trust,
or unlawful combination in restraint Of
trade, shall 20 on the free list until the
combination is dissolved.
But barring some such proviso as
that last named, there is not likely to
be the clear-cut line of division between
the tariff planks of the two parties
that has existed in former contests.
The Democratic principle of reasonable
and moderate tariff schedules is proven
so eminently correct by the logic of
Republican tariff robbery that the Re-
publicans will be forced to give it rec
ognition in their declaration of next
year.
President Roosevelt's Democratic
policies for the regulation of interstate
railroads and great corporations engag-
ed in interstate trade have proven so
popular with the Republican masses
that the Republican convention of next
year cannot escape giving them the
strongest kind of Endorsement, with an
unequivocal promise to continue them.
The series of that trust prosecutions
which the administration is preparing
to push, from now until the elections of
next year, will still further commit the
Republican party to the Democratic
principle of defending the rights of the
many against the aggressions of the
few. So there seems little prospect of
sharp divisions in the platforms of the
two parties on these important issues.
The great difference will be that the
Democrats will be sincere in their
promises, while scores of the most
powerful leaders in the Republican
party will reluctantly consent to these
Democratic principles with the secret
purpose of betraying them.
A year in advance of the meeting of
the national conventions seems proba-
BILE that the deepest and the broadcast
lines of division in next years contest
will relate to the preservation of the
rights of the States against the danger
GUS aggressions with which the Repub-
lican party threatens them, to the reck-
less extravaganza with which the peo-
pies money has been voted away, to
the bold usurpations of legislative
powers by the executive and the
frightful expense of our imperialistic
insular policy.
Whatever the Republican convention
may do, the Democratic convention will
declare in the strongest possible terms
in favor of making our inland
waterways navigable to their utmost
capacity both as carriers of freight and
the most effective regulators of rail
road charges.
The supreme issues on which the
Democrats next year should take their
tirmest stand will be for defense of the
constitutional rights of the States, for
preservation of the system of govern
ment under which this country has
grown to be the greatest in all history,
and to check the tendencies which
would make of the President an execu-
tive as autocratic as the Czar.-St
Louis Republic.