The Yakima herald. [volume] (North Yakima, W.T. [Wash.]) 1889-1914, 1909-06-16
won and Bryan given his third defeat.
Taft Aware of Revision Sentiment.

won and Bryan given his third defeat.
Taft Aware of Revision Sentiment.
Mr.. Taft knows all this, and he is
fully aware of the depth of the revi-
sion sentiment in the western states.
In all of his speeches during his west
ern tour he constantly referred to his
personal pledge of support for down.
ward revision. 1 was with him for 49,
600 miles or so on that trip and can
testify from personal experience that
he never failed to make that pledge,
and that it was received with intense
satisfaction by the people to whom he
was speaking.
The western senators who have
been fighting Mr.. Aldrich represent
not great corporations or machine
politics, but the real, live, throbbing
sentiment of the Mississippi valley be-
yond. In spite of this fact, short
sighted men from New England per-
sist in the attitude of defiance to this
public sentiment of the west, and the
present prospects are that any tariff
bill which is passed, even if it is
signed by President Taft, as seems
likely, will be only in small meas
ure redemption of the pledges which
helped win the west for the republic
can candidate.
There was no shrewder Judge of
public opinion in the United States
in the last generation than William
Mckinley. He had the faculty of keep
ing his ear to the ground, and often
when he was accused of vacillation
or delay, or lack of nerve, he was
merely waiting to assure himself of
what the people really wanted. He
was a believer in the idea that the
people were supreme, and that the
president or senators who did not
represent them when they had fully
made up their minds, betrayed their
trust.
Listened to the Interior.
When he wanted to find real crys-
utilization of public sentiment in the
United States he never went to the
Atlantic seaboard for his information,
because he knew we'll the corporate
and immigration influence of that
section. Instead of that he listened
to murmurs from the interior. And
he listened to such good purpose that
during the whole of his administra-
ton, involving as it did the building
up of an entirely new system of col
onial government, after the carrying
on of successful war, he never made
a serious political blunder.
At the risk of repeating something
l may have written long age it seems
just as well to tell the story of when
and where and how William McKin-
ley developed his expansion policy,
which prevails today and which is
accepted by the people as final. 1t is
a case directly in point because Pre-
sident Mckinley was wise enough to
know that when the great interior
mass of the people had made up their
minds that fact created the only safe
guide for the establishment of a great
public policy.
1t is a pity that Senator Aldrich
and his satellites have not been able
to take a lesson out of the same book.
1t so happens that at the present time
the two senators from Iowa are lead
ing the attack on a New England tar
if. Mr.. Cummins is a new man in
the senate, but he has been a tariff
revisionist for years and he made
good almost Immediately after his ar
rival here.
DOlliver an Old Hand.
Senator Dolliver is an old hand at
the business. He served in the ways
and means committee, in the making
and unmaking of the war revenue
act. I can testify from personal ex-
perience that he was one of the best
equipped men on that committee dur
ing all of his service. He was infinite
ly better posted than Mr.. Payne and
he ought to have been on the finance
committee in the senate, and would
have been if the powers that be over
there were not personally afraid of his
great ability.