The Ocala banner. (Ocala, Marion County, Fla.) 1883-194?, 1912-08-02

Bryan at its head, did the party low
er it's crest and begin to sing small
as TO the tariff.
Cleveland had swept the country
upon a straight demand for revenue
only" in 1892. Had he stood flat-foot-
ed upon the platform which had car
ried him over we had never come to
grief. 1t was because he tried to-
amend that platform, as the World
would now amend the Baltimore plat
form, that a great opportunity was
lost the country and the party.
Ii would be impossible to formu-
late simpler truth than that the
government has no right in equity or
law to levy and collect a dollar of
taxes except for its own support
That does not mean free trade. But
the democrat who is afraid of the cry
of free trade had better get off the
line of fire, because everp proposal to
revise the tariff is called free trade
| by the protectionists. He who can
not meet and beat that WORKOUT sub
terfuge is not a democrat, nor fit for
| fighting on the democratic side.
The Wilson bill set out by the mis-
take of accepting the protectionist
formula. AS consequence the dem
ocrats began soon to wander through
the subterranean passages provided
by the rubber tariff as safe retreats
for protectionism. Right and left, be-
fore and after, they came upon forti-
fications artfully prepared. Each
schedule was a masked battery, every
classification a rifle-pit Darkness
reigned Then arose confusion and a
babel of tongues And finally, as had
been forecast in these columns, down
we went!
Times change, and men and meas
ures must cen change with them.
Mr.. Underwood has had to meet 4
different set of conditions from those
which faced Mr.. Wilson. He has met
them with courage and intelligence,
standing out against Mr.. Bryans en-
piricism But revenue" and "reve-
nue. only" lies at the core, and is the
issue, and, in proposing to recall the
ghost of Samuel j. Randall, and to
play second-fddle to Theodore
Roosevelt, the World flies in the face
of democratic history and conviction
leading directly into the hand of pro-
lection, whitehall the old infant
pleadings and labor" cajolements
exploded-is left nothing but obstruc-
ton and delay, through complication
and mystification.
Meanwhile now, as ever and al
ways, protection is robbery under the
forms of law Nothing else can be
made of it. Nor need any democrat
be afraid of free trade, though free
trade is by no means the idea, or the
logic. of the doctrine and demand
| llldl dIl CuSlOIl lIOuSc ldAdl1On SitdII
be for revenue only
Fie upon you, young gentlemen of
the Golden Dome! Yea, and have a
care, If you keep up your monkey
| ing with the buzz-saw of protection
ism, Governor Wilson may, before
the canvass is far advanced, disown
his somewhat belated yet bumptious
organ and ask that you step down
and out. Lord! there are others, and
wouldn't George Harvey laugh?
1t is sad The World has been
making brilliant campaign against
Theodore Roosevelt. Nowhere has
his opportunism-its inconsistencies
to the point of the grotesquely pre-
posterous, it's audacities to the poin.
of shamelessness-bee so ruthless
ly and lucidly set forth Now, in the
matters of free trade and state rule
instead of home rule for the City of
New York, what is the World but al
opportunist, yielding conviction and
precedent to the perverse mood and
fancied need of the hour? 1t is cross
with Gaynor and the police Argal
away with the municipality and give
us a state system. 1t is frightened
by the Tribune's cry of free trade"
Argal, it would deny a principle as
old as the hills and as plain as Holy
CONVERSATIONAL.