The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1910-10-13
THURSDAY. OCTOBER 10, 1910.
VOTERS WILL NOT FORGET

With election day but four weeks re-
moved, and with the primary contests
the country over practically eliminated
from the political situation, the national
issue is distinctly drawn as between
the two leading parties. Such diver
gencies and differences of view as had
sprung up within the Republican party
have been fought out at the primaries
and settled in the subsequent conven-
lions. Speaking from the viewpoint of
the entire national situation, the Re-
publican. party has rarely been in more
promising shape for winning. What
ever resentments may have been en-
gendered in the preliminary contests
have already drifted into obscurity and
forgetfulness. Every good Republican
wherever he may be-in whatever
state or congressional district under
stands that the time is now at hand
when he must construe his Republican
ism as meaning something more than
taking sides between the Insurgents
and Standpatters. He recognizes that
the issue which he is now facing is
whether the destinies of the country
are to remain under Republican guild
ance or to be transferred to Democratic
control
And not those alone who are affiliated
as Republicans, but business men,
workingmen and all who gauge their
political action in accord with sober
reason and not merely in response to
the party-clan cry, will be putting to
themselves the question whether the
country is most likely to prosper under
continuation of Republican policies or
will fare better by quick reversal of
those policies and the adoption of the
program of negations which the Demo-
cratic platforms generally are propos-
ing. The sifted down question is
whether the Sixty second Congress is to
be in majority Republican or Demo-
cratic. The time is at hand when the
man who wants to vote intelligently
must ask himself what each of the two
leading parties really stand for.
Almost without exception probably
without single eXception-the state
Democratic platforms that haye been
formulated for use in the present cam
paign have expressed disapproval of
the Republican principle of protection
to home industries and home labor. In
spite of the teaching Of experience, in
spite of the fact that the country has
enormously prospered and is now at a
very high range OF prosperity under the
application Of the protective policy, the
Democratic theorists, according to
their chronic habit, are stalking hopes
of salvation on the advice that this
prosperity-pro policy be reversed.
They would have a tariff drafted as
nearly as possible on the free trade
principle. They would throw the Amer
lean market open to a flood of manu-
ia ctured products produced by the
under paid labor of Europe and the
starvation wage labor of Japan, China
and India Asia is building modern tex
tile mills. shoe factories, sugar refiner-
les and is getting into the manufactur-
ing game with labor paid from SIX to
nine cents day for ten hour day. Is
the American working man likely to
vote for proposition that will bring
him into life-or-death struggle, with
the low-priced labor of the Orient?
That is the question which he must
settle for himself before he casts his
ballot next November. And the Ameri-
can farmer has a similar question put
straight up to him in the opposing poll
cies of the two leading parties. He
cannot fail to comprehend that the Re-
publican protective policy has built up
for him the splendid home market. He
certainly will not forget that when the
Democratic party was last in power it
tinkered the tariff with results that
were disastrous to the manufacturing
industries and the farming industries
alike. The majority of farmers date
Lnelr experiences TO the era OF the
Wilson-Gorman tariff under which the
country tried to do business from 1893
to 1897, and they will not have forgot
ten that it was an era of 50-cent wheat,
25-cent corn, scent cotton and scent
pork, and it was also an era during
which the value of farm lands slumped
from so to 70 per cent. Every branch
of trade and industry went more or less
to the bow-wows under the Democratic
Wilson German tariff. The whole