Carson City daily appeal. [volume] (Carson City, Nev.) 1907-1930, 1913-07-28
Make a Clean Sweep

THOSE who voted for the election of Wilson last fall did so
because they wanted to see a clean sweep made of the high tariff
iniquity. They understood that the tariff was costing the peo-
pie a billion and a-half dollars a year and they were tired of con-
tributing their proportion of this high-handed extortion. They
were weary of impoverishing themselves to build up a class of
millionaires. But now that the tariff question is in the hands OF
Congress they want no half way measures. They depend on Viii
son to make a clean sweep just as they depended on Lincoln to
wipe out slavery, root and branch.
When Mr.. Lincoln came to deal Will slavery there were men
who had followed him that far who then turned back. They
were willing to check slavery. They were willing to cripple it.
They were willing to strip it Of some of its power. But they
earnest who comes to deal with the kindred wrong of protection
ism may expect that when his serious purpose to tear down and
him to that point will turn back in Albright. They will be ready
to compromise. They will be ready to cripple or check prOtec-
tionism. They will propose lower percentage of theft. But
they will not consent to the destruction of the principle itself.
The error of the protective tariff is inherent and fundamen-
a small few, as slavery could not be tolerated in a small way. A
little robbery is as obnoxious in principle a s a large robbery,
exactly as a little slavery was as obnoxious in principle as much
slavery. If one man may be taxed a small amount for the bene-
fit of another man the motive and excuse will always be on hand
to increase the oppression. If slavery had been untouched in
some districts, OF if the blacks had been retained IN bondage a
part of the time and left free a part of the time, the latent spirit
of injustice would have asserted itself in a demand for more
territory and longer periods of serfdom. AS the States could not
remain half free and half slave, so now the people, all equal be-
fore the law, cannot much longer maintain toward each other
the relationship of oppressor and oppressed. The conflict of
ideas is irreconcilable. Protectonism must go. 1t is not enough
that some of it shall go. 1t must go to the remotest fiber, and the
principle itself must be made hateful to the people whom it has
deceived and plundered.
The Democrat in earnest who is to apply the knife to this
defiant error need have no misgivings as to the result. If he
shall lose friends and supporters he will gain them also. For
every timid o corrupt man who turns back, a hundred champions
of right will spring to his side. The surly sophistry of greed
of wrongdoing. Old men cling tenaciously to ancient errors.
and croaking warnings against the nohest impulses cannot in
been stirred to its depths by the mockery and the iniquity of a
system at once cruel, impusive and dangerous. The moral sense
Of the country has revoted against the cOllosol bribery and the
undoubted injustice of a policy which has been temporized with
too long. TO be a Democrat in earnest from this day forth is to
purged through and through Of the infamy that gives the lie
to its hoasted liberty, equality and fraternity.