The Birmingham age-herald., 1908-01-23

no democrat has so much as pushed a broom in a government office for almost Il years.
 And issuing bonds in time of peacel The democrats had to issue bonds to discharge duty imposed by law and here are the republicans issuing interest bearing bonds without authority. not to meet the needs of the government, but just to raise more money to deposit in banks without interest.
 Their humbug has bursted in their hands and great is the wreck thereof It Is dreadful blow to confidence The people cannot be sure now that what they plant will grow next summer. All frauds prove to be boomerangs at last.
 The second advantage the republicans have had over us is at least an honest one, because we gave 1t to them. They have. hung together while we have pulled apart.
 Family Quarrel.
 But now they are at 1t, hammer and tongs. among themselves. It is more than the mere clash of personal ambi- tion. Any sound party can stand that and even thrive on it. because it is 0 proof of vitality and hope.
 We care nothing about the causes fur ther than to know that they are strong and deep-seated. The republicans never took the trouble to inquire Into the right
  just grinned and made the most of them. Let us do likewise now.
 They are quarfeling about their Pres ident and his ways and says. Some de- clare he goes gunning too much for trusts and other big game which grows in the republican preserves. Others say he does not go gunning for them enough While more complain that he keeps the whole neighborhood disturbed because he will not use smokeless powder, but likes lot of noise and smoke and smell. So everywhere they have gone from whis- pering to shouting and from calling names to blows. Up in Ohio they have pulled their razors
 Broken Promises.
 Then many republicans have grown weary of broken promises to revise the tariff taxes. But these the standpatters declare to be little better than traitors to the party. Others are appalled, at the enormous and still swelling expenditures of the government, and others at the open disregard of the lines which sep arate the powers of the three depart ments and the spheres of state and na- ton.
 So the advantage of comparative CO., hesion which our opponents have so long enjoyed is gone, too. More than that, the way Is open for us to gain that advantage for ourselves And, If l can read the eyes of the democracy of the nation they are going to do It.
 We are now free once more to go be- fore the people on equal terms with our competitors. And we shall gain or lose according as the policies we propose shall attract or repel the confidence of the people.
 I believe the great standard ideas of democracy were. neyer more attractive
 tnda I not stop to repeat them and need not. Everybody knows them. l shall speak briefly of the one only, tariff reform.
 Burdensome Tariff.
 believe the people at large are suffer ing more from the eXactions of the taIih than from any other single cause. The favored interests were permitted, as everybody knows, to write the various clauses in the Dingley law to suit them selves, and they were not at all stlnsy about it, either Their contributions had won the election and they were enjoying their own.
 For oyer 10 years, in spite of enormous increases in the amount of articles taxed the republicans have refused to reduce the rates of taxation. So the part ot what the people are made to pay, which goes into the treasury has, in spite of ex- trayapance in all directions. filled it with idle money Hundreds of millions which do nobody any good but favored banks While the far larger part of what the people are made to pay which goes to the favored interests in the form of arbitrary advance m prices to home consumers has rapidly bred illicit wealth.
 When Haveneyer. the head of the sugar trust, had to admit under oath that the tariff is the mother of trusts, there was lA Rf hnfn fieiaries They fell back on their stock argument. Look at the Standard oil conl- pany the greatest of all trusts, with oil on the free list.
 oil On Free List.
 I confess that point used to puzzle me a little until I discovered the facts. The only country which could export oil in any quantity is Russia which puts an enormous duty on imports of oil So there was slipped into the Dingley bill a clause which provides for the same duty on oil imported here which the country from which 1t comes imposes on American oil. Of course. we have had no oil from Rus sia through petroleum, and it's products are nominally on the free list.
 It is folly to rail at the trusts and pur- sue them with fines and injunctions, while we carefully cherish the law which breeds and feeds them The way to stop groWth is to go at the root of it. And what re- lief would the people get If the trusts were all dissolved without revising the tariff? The men and concerns which compose them would so right on drawing separate ly the substance of the people by means of these excessive tariff charges. It would be only change of form with the same result.
 I have seen a careful estimate showing that every family in the United States contributes an average of s100 per year to