The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1911-08-31
A MELANCHOLY PLIGHT.

A MELANCHOLY PLIGHT.
The insurgent Republicans in the
Senate are now the laughing stock of
the country Never did men in public
life protesting high ideals cut a more
ridiculous figure. The pit they have
dug fer themselves is deeper than any
hole they planned to put President Taft
in. He has proved his sincerity and
kept the faith by vetoing the rag-bag
wool bill on the ground that there is
no public eXigency requiring the re-
vision of Schedule K in August without
adequate information, rather than in
December next with such information.
We believe the country is with him
in this view of the matter. Business
men certainly are, and without distinc-
ton of party.
But the precious insurgent crew,
where do they find themselves? Zeal
for the public welfare was supposed to
be the breath of their nostrils. They
consecrated themselves to tariff re-
vision. Mr.. La Toilette, their master
full leader was willing to stay in Wash
ington until every schedule was changed.
Senator Cummins, the patentee of the
Iowa idea, hailed the passage of the
cotton bill by the House as an oppor-
tunity to prove the faith that was in
him. He would do some tariff revision,
too, and proposed amendments reducing
the duties on iron and steel. Senator
Bristow, of Kansas, followed suit with
an amendment dealing with sugar The
hole for Mr.. Taft was to be a bottom
less pit, but at the crook of Mr.. La Fol-
lette's finger, they withdrew their
amendments to make way for his cot
ton bill, a substitute for the House
measure, and then the wicked and
treacherous Democrats threw off their
shackles, knocked the coalition with the
new boss of the Senate into a cooked
hat, passed the House cotton bill with
the connivance Of regular Republicans
who absented themselves or declined to
vote, stole the Cummns amendment
and made it their own, and piled amend
ments of the chemical, machinery and
coal schedules in a shameless debauch
Of tariff tinkering. The La Toilette
cotton bill received only ten votes.
Punctured We're the pretensions of the
new boss. He had had his day of strut
ting and spluttered impotently.
AS the New York Sun says, in the
recent queer congress there has been
nothing more grotesque that Mr.. La
Toilette, beaten at his own game,
pleading for deliberation in tariff re-
vision when the Democrats were voting
down his fly by night cotton bill and
proposing to amend the chemical sched-
ule. In absurdity the Hon. Joseph Lit
tie Bristow was a good second, hyster-
ically charging that there was an odious
conspiracy between the regular Repub-
licans and the late allies of the Insur-
gents and then voting against his own
sugar amendment pilfered by Senator
Wesley Jones of Washington, under his
very nose. Senator Cummins, opposing
his cherished steel and iron bill because
the Hon. Augustus Octavius Bacon, of
Georgia, had reintroduced it and put
the Democratic brand upon it, furnished
more fun to gods and men. 1t was a
side splitting farce and there is none so
poor now to do Battle Scared Bob rev.
erence.
We understand that Senator Bristow
says that there is nothing left for the
Insurgents to do but appeal to the coun-
try. The country will certainly howl
them down.