Daily Arizona silver belt., 1910-04-24
THE REPUBLICAN PARTY's JEWEL

The republican party has precious iewe which is it's most highly prized possession. Mr Bryan, ill letter from South America intended to be read at a Jefferson day banquet, exposed this jewel to the admiration of his democratic followers, and seems to treat it as a new dis cOvery.
 The name of this jewel is inconsistency-not consistency, but inconsistency. What the re publican party would have done without it. and without the extraordinary popular credulity and blind faith that have made it effective it is hard to imagine
 MT. Bryan points out that in 1896, when he was advocating the free coinage of silver at the ratio of 16 to 1, he said that more money would mean higher prices. He argued that all the money in the country is in one balance and all the commodities in the country are in the other balance. When you add more money, the money balance goes down and the commodity balance goes up; 1t takes more money to balance an un- changed amount of commodities, so prices are higher. That idea is called the quantitative the ory, and Mir. Bryan urged it upon the people
 The republican party said it was perfectly ab- surd; that it was hollow theory without any shell; that it was the hole in the doughnut with out any doughnut that, in short, there was noth- ing to it.
 And now, after high prices have come to such an extent that people wonder how anybody ever looked upon them as things to be sought and fought for, the republican party is engaged in showing that it isn't the tariff or the trusts or stock-watering or monopoly that makes high prices, but more money. Much gold has been dug, and the store of money is greatly increased; ;; so prices necessarily go up. Mir. Taft has ex- Olainpd if that way in a Spaacb in yubiob bo do clared that the "best tariff law that ever was" had nothing to do with the high cost of living
 But that is the quantitative theory of money the very thing MT. Bryan was preaching in 1896, and the very thing the republican party said was false. No wonder Mir. Bryan exults at this wholesale conversion of the republican party toI his way of thinking.
 Mr. Bryan isn't trying to revive the issue of free silver. Nobody wants free silver now, be- cause nobody wants higher prices. Lower prices are what everybody is looking for now-every- body, that is except Mr. Adrich and Mr. Can non and MT. Morgan and few others.
 But this abrupt switching about of the repub- lican party is a new use of its precious jewel of inconsistency, and Mr. Bryan most assuredly l has right to chuckle over it.
 The jewel is nothing new, however. The re puDllcdu party Has uecldfeu, III US nedIl-JO- heart talks with the people about the tariff, that the foreigner pays the tariff tax, and that there is no tariff tax to be paid It has proclaimed the policy of protection as a noble instrument for the good of the American workingman, and then it has imported hordes of European work ingmen to underbid the American workingman in his own home. It has asserted that the tariff was in the interests of the farmer because it pro- tected his wheat against the competition of for eign wheat, thereby giving him high prices; and it has declared that the tariff has nothing what ever to do with the high prices of farm products, because this country exports so many farm products that the tariff couldn't affect their home prices. It has taken credit for periods of prosperity created by the sun and the rain and the peoples need to buy food, raiment and shelter; and when it's own bounties to special privilege have drained so much of the people $ | wealth away from the people that they no longer could buy, and hard times came, it has blamed the result to its opponents.
 Consistency is a jewel; but inconsistency, as used by the republican party, is a jewel that is far more precious and vastly more interesting.