The daily Gate City. [volume] (Keokuk, Iowa) 1855-1916, 1910-02-24
PRESIDENT TAFrs STAND.

No platform effort during the TWEEN
ty-five years last past has caused
and will cause SO much comment as
will that of President Taft delivered
Lincoln Day to the Republican club of
New York city None has been fraught
with so much purport to the political
| and business interests of the country
as this one.
The present Is acknowledged to be a
crisis in these regards, it being a
time in which the issues involved
must be decided one way or the other.
II the present congress shall refuse
tc carry into execution the platform
| pledges of the Republican party, it
Will demonstrate that the evils those
pledges are aimed at are stronger than
the government.
Here we have party with his
tory of great achievements behind it
that retains its power by virtue Of sci
emn promises formulated in it's plat
form, with President who is exerting
all honest and honorable means for
the redeeming of those promises, and
with large working nlajorities in both
houses of congress
What then can prevent the CARR ing
cut of the program formulated by
the party and most emphatically in
dorsed by the people at the polls?
That there is danger of failure in this
REGARD is reflected in almost every
paragraph of the Presidents speech.
n 1irrl1{ II Co., \
that had there been no such danger
the speech would not have been de-
livered at all
The speech was momentous one
and will take permanent place in the
political history of the country. 1t
will be quoted oftener than any other
effort of the kind since the delivery
in Cooper's Institute of the remark
able address that made Lincoln pos
sibility for the presidential Office, and
viii h marked turning point in the
history of this nation The supreme
Importance of the issues involved. the
unhesitating manner in which they
are met, and the official position held
by the man who meets them, demand
attention with an emphasis unequaled
by any like effort of the century
There Is also something pathetic in
it. The President evidently has found
the contract of inducing congress to
make good on the party promises a
hard one, and as last resort turns
for help TO the American people as
much as to say, Il am unequal to the
task, come We up ana help. Add your
influence to mine by bringing popu-
lar pressure to bear on your repre-
sentatives that they may be compelled
to do the square thing"
One of the most remarkable things
about the address is the simplicity
and candor with which he states the
situation. He takes US into his con-
fidence by acknowledging that the Aid
rich-Payne tariff bill does not strictly
comply with the party's pledges, but it
is pointed out that this applies to the
wooden schedule only, and that in all
other respects those pledges have
been redeemed to the letter He shows
this to be so in the most triumphant
Llduuei III the NOThluSS or the law Tor
six month succeeding it's adoption, !
both as to revision downward and as
to the increase of revenue under it.
The only way we can with certainty
judge tariff law is by its workings,
and now the President is enabled to
point to the comparison between the |
present and former tariff laws and
show conclusively that it fills the
ideals as to the production OF revenue
and as to the question of downward
revision on the necessaries of life |
more completely than any other tariff
law has ever done.
Just one more point: All questions
as to Taft's spinal column are set at
rest by his incorporating attitude
on law-enforcement against the trusts. |
Recognizing the power of these COM
binations to bring on another crisis
and the implied threat to do so If he
persists in the policy announced in his +,
message to congress, figuratively /
speaking he backs up against the Sher-
man Antitrust law, draws his blade