Connecticut western news., 1907-09-05
PLATFORMS
 PAST AND PRESENT
1908 WILL HAVE NEW ISSUES
Old Issues Will Take new Shapes Platform Making was Easy in the 0Iden Days-Tariff may be one of the Platform PIanks.

the Platform PIanks.
 More than ordinary distinction and likewise more than ordinary labor, will attach to membership in the platform committees of the Republican and Dem- ocratic parties ill 1908. New issues will be before the country and the old issues which will be prominent enough to be mentioned in the platforms are taking new shapes. The platforms of even as recent time as 1900 or 1904 will give very little aid to the men who will for mulate the creed for their respective par ties next year. In earlier days the men who drew up the party articles of faith had comparatively easy task. They could denounce the opposition party for its sins of omission and commission, could point with pride to the things which their own party did, and if the people should commission them to run the gov ernment, they would make still more glorious record and push the country still farther forward in the direction of pros perity and progress.
 In 1908, however, the platform makers will be dealing with some questions which had no close counterparts in the canvasses of the past, and there will be some uncertainty as to how far to go on any of those issues. Possibly the tariff will be brought forward in the cam paign, but it is not likely to attract any thing like the attention which it com manded in 1880, 1884 and 1888. The Republicans, in their: platform of 1908, are likely to pledge themselves to revise the tariff if they carry the election, and tosdo the revising immediately after the inauguration of the president ill March, 1899. The tariff is an old question. It has, in one shape and another, been be- fore the country at intervals for over a century.
 But this time it will take new shape for some of the manufacturers of the country, who used to be popularly sup posed to be the chief benefcaries of the tariff, are now asking for revision.
 The trust issue has been with us for nearly twenty years, for the conventions of 1888 dealt with it, having in mind the sugar trust. which was formed in 1887. proportions far beyond those of a score of years ago, and combines undreamed of at that time have come into existence since then. The corporations are being assailed in these days to an extent not thought of at any time in the past. The attacks which are being made on the railroads through a large part of the country are far more extensive than were the granger assaults third of century ago.
 Then, too, the question of centraliza- tion and state rights will come np ill the conventions to trouble the framers of the platforms. As most of the Democrats in Congress have gone as far as the Re publicans in the assertion of national au- thopity, the railway rate regulation, the pure food, the meat inspection, the quar- antine and other measures passed ill the recent congress and, as each of these stretches of authority had some oppo- nents on each side, there will have to be some dexterity i'll handling those issues in the platforms.
 The first platform by the national Democracy was a document which was often quoted afterward as laying down the general principles on which that party ought to proceed ill appealing to the people and in running the govern aent Many of its blanks were adopted in subsequent platforms word for word. This was particularly true i'll the con- vention of 1914, where many of the orators took occasion to refer to the de- liverance of 1S40 as the Bible of their political faith. In 1914 the Wings adopted their first platform. In the can- vas of 1840 the Wings under Harrison and Tyler swept the country.
 Naturally, the platform adopted by the Republicans i'll 1856, ill their first na- tional campaign. was of historic import tance. Practically, however, it touched only one issue, the necessity for the preservation of the territories to freedom. The repeal of the Missouri compromise, in 1854, threw the territories open to slavery on equal terms with freedom and forced all the friends of freedom to unlte to check this invasion. Under the Re publican name they met at Philadelphia, nominated Fremont for president and framed platform which was strong on that paramount issue, and which also favored public improvements, as well as the construction of a railway to the