The Chanute times. [volume] (Chanute, Kan.) 1897-1913, 1908-02-14
Striking U1teranceS from Mr.
Taft's Speech
From the Kansas City Journal.

an irresponsible plutoS'"Sy'
ing the lssr four years, there has
boen a great moral awakening to
this danger among the people and
popular demand that the law
breakers-no matter how wealthy
or how high or powerful their pos
sit1on-shall be made to suffer.
Under the leadership of Theodore
Roosevelt, the Republican party has
not faltered in its determination to
meet the requirements of this situa-
ton, and enact such legislation as
may be necessary to bring to clos.
this period of lllegttimate corporate
immunity.
Vigorous action and measures to
stamp out existing abuses and effect
reforms are necessary to vindicate
society as at present constituted.
Otherwise, we must yield to those
who seek to introduce new
order of things on socialistie
basis.
The message contains an answer
to the charges made that the ad-
ministration is responsible for the
industrial depression which has fol
lowed; heartened the great body
of the people as by a bugle
call to renewed support of the poll
! cies of this administration.
The panic was doubtless chiefly
due to the exhausting of the free
capital of the world by reason OF
the over-investment in enterprises
that have not been as productive as
expected. Then our monetary
system is not of such an elastic ne.
ture as TO meet the emergency pro-
duced by sudden fright on the parl
of the holders of money, who with
draw it from business uses ano
heard it against disaster. The re
suit has been an industrial depres.
sion which we all hope and be
lieve from the conditions prevail
ing will be of short duration.
One of the great policies to which
the Republican party has been
pledged from the beginning has
been the protective system, by
which industries have been diversl-
fed and domestic manufactures and
farm productions have been eGor-
mously developed. The method
consists in the imposition of Gus
toms duties upon impoCted produc cts
equal to the difference in the cost
of producing the article in foreign
couEtries and in this country, al.
lowing for a reasonable profit to
the home producer. Our whole
business structure rests on the
system, and the wage earners de
pendent on it are myriad. In the
ten years which has elapsed since
the enactment of the Dingley tariff
the conditions have so changed as
TO make a number of the schedules
under that tariff too high and som e
too low. This renders it necessary
to examine the schedules in order
that the tariff shall be placed on a
purely protective basis BY that l
mean, it should properly protect
all m anufacturers, farmers and bust
ness men, but should not be so high
as to furnish a temptation to the
formation of monopliss to app ro-
pirate the undue profit of excessive
rates.
The policy of expansion is what
distinguishes the administration of
Mckinley and adds another to the
list of patriotic victories of the Re
publican party. By this policy,
the United States has become a
world power. In the course of 1t,
we have built up a navy, not large
enough as yet, bat large enough to
be respectable and to make our in
fluence felt for peace and good in
ternational morals the world oyer.
Another issue which the Republi-