Twice-a-week plain dealer. (Cresco, Howard County, Iowa) 1895-1913, 1907-02-15
Utterly Futile.


So Governor Curtis Guild, Jr., and
other Massachusetts Republican tariff
revisionists are at it again-that Is,
they are beseeching the president and
congress to reduce the tariff. Their
effort is utterly futile. They might as
well appeal to the Egyptian sphinx for
redress of grievances. Uncle Joe runs
the house, Aldrich runs the senate and
the president is so busy in his war
with Foraker that he has no time to
consider such matter as the tariff.
One might as well expect man en-
gagged in life and death struggle with
a grizzly to stop for purposes OF ex-
amining a menu card. The Browns
vile episode has proved an apple of
discord among the Republicans, and
the end is not yet, and let us hope
that the end will not come until the
Republican party is rent in twain new
er to be reunited. That is certainly a
contamination devoutly to be wished
Colonel Roosevelt evidently has on his
fighting clothes and has made up his
mind to carry the war into Africa
name for Ohio-by appointing negro
to the collectorship of internal revenue
at Cincinnati, thing apt to ruin For
aker and Dick, no matter what they
say or do. With them it's case Of
damned if you do and damned If you
don't" White Ohio Republicans are
perhaps unanimous in the opinion that
NfRn 1c, thn
"away down south in Dixie" but negro
officials in Ohio-thats another story.
Very much depends on whose OK Is
gored, don't you know. Undoubtedly
Colonel Roosevelt struck Foraker on
the flank. There has been, first and
last, much philosophizing about what
is the master human passion. Lord
Byron, who certainly knew what he
was talking about, said, Sweet is re
yenge!" He was competent witness
for he was not only the greatest poet
that ever lived, but the most revenge
full of mortals. He roasted his multi.
tudinous enemies over a slow fire,
bathed them in vitriol, pulled their
teeth, gouged their eyes out, broke
them on wheel, applied the thumb
screws and rack and inflicted upon
them any other tortures he could de-
wise, and in that regard he was mar
yelously fertile in resources.
To use crude but most emphatic
expression coined by my old law part
ner, ex-Lieutenant Governor David
Alexander Ball of Missouri, "he limb.
ed, skinned and jayhawed them" Sc
far as Foraker ct al. are concerned
the president seems to be III Byron's
revengeful frame of mind when he
wrote ''The English Bards and Scotch
Reviewers" haven't read that poem
in ten years, but the opening lines, d
sample of the whole, are fresh in my
memory yet and will be till 60 hence:
Still must I hear? Must hoarse Fitz.
gerald bawl
His creaking couplets in a tavern hall,
And I not write lest Scotch Reviews
my muse?
Prepare for rhyme! I'll publish, right OF
wrong.
Fools are my theme; let satire be my
song!
The papers do say that the iron en-.
tered the soul of Senator Foraker
when he learned that the president
had called Booker I. Washington into
consultation as to the Ohio negro ap.
,pointments, since which Booker T. has
been dubbed ''the third senator from
Ohio" It's not only pretty fight as
lit stands, but furious one. Demo
,crats are shouting go it, husband
go it, bearv with perfect impartiality
But isn't this Republican Massachu
setts wall for lower tariff the funnies
thing ever put in print since Mari
Twain, the most illustrious AIissourial
now living-indeed the most famous
American man of letters-frst publish
ed 1.-The Jumping Frog of Calavera
| County," We who have been feecet
; for all these years to make hoIida,
for the tariff barons-and, by the way
John Sherman bestowed that title upol
them-can extract some comfort to Sc
them sQuirm. Butting ones hea,
against stone wall has been syno
nym for stupidity for, No. these man.
i. years. but that is precisely what Ties