The evening times. [volume] (Grand Forks, N.D.) 1906-1914, 1907-03-30
DENOCRACY'S .LOST CAUSE.

DENOCRACY'S .LOST CAUSE"
Twenty years ago Mr.. Cleveland
began his war on the protective sys-
TEN by declaring: 1T is condition,
not a theory, which confronts u.s."
Today in inviting the democratic par
ty to renew that war he insists on
"the enunciation of a principle rather
than the denunciation of condition"
If the ex-president's second call unto
the breach had any present day re-
levance. if it could awaken any gen.
uine political impulses and passions,
or were addressed to party in the
least willing to fill the wall up with
its dead in vindication of the theory
that international exchanges should
be made free, it might be accepted
as politically as we'll as accidentally
significant. If the Cleveland program
did not come into head-on collision
with so many ifs-if the policy of
dropping all other inconvenient and
disruptive issues could be forced on
the democratic voters who are now
misguidedly wasting their energies
denouncing the trusts and shouting
for government ownership of the rail-
roads; if Mr.. Bryan could be per-
suaded to take six years trip around
the world and immense himself in an
thropology or the comparative study
of religions; if Mr.. Hearst would stop
organizing independence leagues and
other offshoots of Jeffersonianism and
Lincolnism; if democratic national
conventions were all as docile as that
of 1904 and candidates guaranteed
safe and sane" would only run a
few hundred feet second faster than
Ex-Judge Parker-in short, if things
were not as they are but as certain
philosophers would have them, we
might be persuaded to think that Mr..
Cleveland had discovered a means of
salvation Of no inconsiderable prom
Use to the weather beaten democracy.
But as things are the ex-president
seems to US to be talking in a 70
cabulary more or less unintelligible
to the present generation. He as
sures the American public, in the
midst of an unparalleled period of in
dustrial and commercial progress,
that the tariff under which this ex-
pansion has occurred is responsible
for the domestic injustices of which
the voters are now complaining-for
freight rebates to favored shippers,
for combinations in restraint of trans
portation and trade, for the watering
of stock values, the abuse of direc-
torate powers, and widespread laxity
in the observance by corporations of
their obligations to the law and the
public. The people have the idea that
1t is easier to correct those evils di-
rectly by limiting the powers of cor
porations and extending the legal
safeguards against selfish and corrupt
manipulation Of our great public utili-
ties. But Mr.. Cleveland thinks there
is a better way than the direct way.
He would have us end our ills by
removing all protective taxes and let
ting the United States take its chance,
share and share alike, with other ma
lions in the rivalries of industry and
commerce. We should then have
cheaper prices and lower wages, and
with diminishing prosperity would
come a diminution of the temptations
to overcapitalization, speculation and
corporate Encouragement.
Twenty years ago the plea which
Mr.. Cleveland now renews had still
some political efficacy. 1t rallied the
south, which had striven from 1920
on to effect an untaxed exchange of
its slave labor products for the cheap
labor manufactures of Europe. It
excited the west, too, whose industry
had not yet become diversified and
whose agricultural staples still had
to seek in large measure the foreign
market. But today, with the old Sec
tional antagonism vanishing and the
south and the west doing their share
in manufacturing, the tariff agitation
of the SOS Is out OF date. Most of
the democratic leaders who count
know that it is moribund, and they
will only smile at the suggestion of
dropping the real issues Of the day
and pledging exclusive devotion. to a
pale memory Of the past. The demo-
cratic party is Incapable of agreeing