Williams news., 1916-08-24
THANKS TO DEMOCRATS
RURAL CREDITS LAW ADDED TO
 EXCELLENT LIST.
Republican Claim to All Political Vir- tue and Ability Is Shown to Be
 Altogether Foolish.

President Wilson was warranted in making something of a ceremony of his signing of the rural credits bill. The measure is not perfect. It may not work as well as it is hoped. But 1t is piece of constructive legislation which is designed to supply something long and notoriously lacking in our financial system-something in respect of which most other countries have been far in advance of the United States. This has been frankly admit ted by our most competent authorities. All political parties have been de claring for years past that American farmers ought to be able to get loans on easier terms.
 It remained for a Democratic ad- ministration to write this important law on the statute books. Taken with the federal reserve act, the establish ment of a federal trade commission, the repeal of free tolls at Panama, and the passage of several important bills of the class of the workingmen's s compensation act and the child labor law-the two latter yet to be achieved it makes up a record of legislation which no Republican administration of recent years came anywhere near matching. Of itself 1t constitutes a powerful claim of President Wilson upon the approval of the nation.
 We know what Republicans will say of these Democratic laws. So far as they are good, 1t will be asserted that they are of Republican inspira- ton. This is especially alleged of the reform of the currency. It was be- gun by the Republicans. And, as the Philadelphia Press ingeniously said some time ago. the Democrats are not going to be allowed to "hide their sins" behind the new banking law, the impetus towards which and the mate rial upon which it was based came from Republican sources. Admit all this, and still the fact stands out that it was the Incompetent" Democratic party which did for the country what the supremely efficient" Republican party was totally unable to do.
 This is a wholesome thing to bear in mind just at present, for it is evil dent that the Republicans will be tempted to go into the campaign with their old calm assertion that they pos sess a monopoly of the political virtue and the political ability of this coun- try. MT. Hughes himself. in some things he has said, appears to lean that way. Now if he begins making speeches along that line-aff1rming that the country needs great things done for it which only the Republicans have the skill and power to do-he will be confronted with the Democratic record we have referred to. With that he will have to deal fairly, if he wishes to retain the respect of his country men. If he elects to attack the fed. eral reserve law, or the rural credits bill, let him do so sQuarely, and with reasons given. But it will not do for him or any other Republican orator or editor to argue that the enactments are good, but that the party respon- sible for them is incurably bad. Above all, 1t will not do to go up and down the land with the pretense that the Re. publican party is alone "f1t to rule; ;' that it is a thousand times wiser and more effective and purer than its rival.