Daily Arizona silver belt., 1909-04-11
POLITICS or THE PAST
Colonel watterson Recalls Some Repun
 lican Tariff Esformers.

Henry Watterson in the Louisville Courier-J Journal.
 Assuredly we have seen queer things in politics and have lived through eccsn- tric times. General Sherman urged MT. Hayes to make General Joseph E. Johns ton secretary of war. Hayes not cnly wanted to 6o it, but submitted Che prop osition to council of his friends. He did make Judge Key, an old line dem- ocrat and confederate soldier, post master general. Cleveland put Gresham at the head of his cabinet. And here
 comes Taft with his nerve and his smile, to put Macveagh, the free trader, so-called, and Dickinson, who "never voted republican ticket and never ex- poets to- in two of the foremost places within his gift. Even Knox, his prime minister, was but year ago talking
 Back to the Constitution" like very drab of democrat whilst only little before that MT. Bryan was accusing MT. Roosevelt of stealing his clothes and the cartoonists were picturing Roosevelt and Bryan cs the two Dromics,
 For .iy part, have worn my party ism as my raiment, loose enough for my own comfort. l was good Union boy in 1861, like thousands Of other boys who later along served the Confedracy tsisI loyal devotion. got what the pTotectionists used to call my free trade ideas mainly from my good friends Ali son and Blaine and John Sherman, who, having freed the nigger,'' were going to ''free the trade" David A. Wells, when first "consorted" with him, was a republican. Garfield became, along with me in London, member of the free trade Golden club.
 The Liberal movement of 1872 was, in its conception, g freq trade move ment. Horace White, the editor of the Chicago Tribune, an out-and-o out republi. can, had translated Bastiat for us. Jos eph Medill, wko immediately followed Horace White as editor and owner of the Tribune, was free trader long before he died, although he could not see his way to breaking his party alleg- lance, and, when the tariff was at the fore, hobblod along as best he could upon intellectual crutches. George Hoad- ley, Stanley Matthews, Schurz, the Brinkerhoffs, Lyman Trumbull, David Davis, the Adams contingent, headed by Sam Bowles, republicans all, were free traders; that is revenue reformcrs os varying degrees.
 Tte ucaitration of Greeley knocked tho calculations of these into cooked hat. Some of them fell back into line and supported Grant. The republican party got its second wind, go to say, as to pcotectionis.n. The democrats found with the coming of Tildsn four years later all iss1e that did not originate in, or carry back to, sectional agitation; though we had long, hard fight against the clements led by Randall before we made 1t party law. And now Taft, with Franklin Macveagh on his right and Jacob McGavock Dickinson on his left, thinks to taks this away from us by the make-believe of revision, which will eliminate the tarif from the pub lie mind for dozen years or SO. Go to, MT. President, go to; the country does, indeed, need the rest cure; but not from the tariff agitation until the duties are reduced to a revenue basis; rather from the ravages of your friend, Theo- dore Roosevelt's incorporate agitations and strenuous personality.