The Oroville weekly gazette. [volume] (Oroville, Wash.) 1905-19??, 1916-02-04
A SCATHING INDICTMENT.

Tory of the country IOr the past io"A
wears. and the course pursued by the
in the conduct or pip-
lie affairs. The writer handles the
chief executive without gloves, ana
points out defects and deficiencies APP
parent to the close observer:
What do you think of the latest ac-
robatic stunts of the esteemed Fresi-
dent of these United States? He has re-
versed himself on practically every
issue before the people, and has repud-
lated every plank of Importance IN he
platform that he campaigned on. ana
which the Baltimore convention as
sured the people was made to be Kept
after election as well as relief upon
before. The presidents words are hne,
but his course is the most aimless ever
pursued by an executive in the history
of this country. He is scholarly IN
competent. His declaration re the ;ariff
is an open acknowledgment that he
and his party have been wrong on that
issue, as is also his present change
of front on the preparedness issue. IL
is all right for a man to change his
mind as conditions change. but when
man so old as Wilson changes as fire.
quently and as completely as he has,
IL is impossible to know which way
this country will be heading at any
given moment of time. 1t shows Woe
full lack of conviction, and OF under
standing of the fixed needs OF the
country. 1t gives all OF us feeling of
insecurity. We may be right for a
brief time, but with such constant and
startling changes of course, there is
no telling how long we may continue
in the right direction, or how far we
may go, before the president realizes
that we are off the course. 1t has taxi
en- four years of the hardest kind Of
experience, of untold suffering and
tremendous economic loss for him TO
learn that his tariff policy was wrong.
His needless experiment to carry out
an unsound theory has cost him moth
ing but the necessity of changing a
facilitating mind, but it has cost the
people Of this country untold misery in
volving millions of dollars of untold
loss, thousands of poverty stricken
homes, countless days of unemploy-
ment, stagnation, starvation and all
the attendant evils of hard times In
this connection, the most distressing
evidence of Wilson's absolute ncapac-
ity and incapability to understand and
appreciate the tremendous harm his
Impractical theories imposed On the
country, was his persistent and mac
countable insistence, in the face OF the
facts, that the country was not suffer-
ing from hard times, even going to the
extent of describing the conditions as
psychological" rather than real. He
obstinately refused to recognize the
truth while millions of his fellow
countrymen were thrown out of work !:
while markets were demora]ized and
industries paralyzed; while want and
hunger stalked into thousands of
homes; while all development ceased !;
while debtors lost their property and
creditors failed because they could not
realize on their securities; while val
ues fell; while the farmer, the dairy
man, the manufacturer and the worker
lost their earning power through the
competition with the European and the
Oriental products, labor and manufac-
turers through the removal of tariff
protection; while the entire economic
life OF the country was stricken by an
unfair and unpatriotic adjustment OF
tariff schedules made to carry out a
theory in the face of years of eXper-
fence and practice under which this
country had developed it's resources
while the dire results of this was des-
troying the enterprise and crushing
the spirit of the people, our president
prated about psychological depres-
sion," and derided the suggestion that
hard times were real. The people who
suffered found no consolation in such
political quackery. They were unable
to satisfy want by attempting to i'm
agine that there was no want. They
were unable to earn enough to pay for
the high cost of living by the simple
process of thinking that work was
plentiful and wages high, when there
was no work to be had and no wages
to be earned. And it is hard for the
people now after this dreadful exper-
fence to believe in the sincerity of the
conversion of president who made
light Of their condition at the height of
their suffering, and who changes his
mind on the eve Of an election. They
are forced to the conclusion that he
has seen the light of expediency only
and that after election, if successful,
he may change his mind and adopt an
other course equally disastrous to the
one he followed heretofore. The same
feeling influences every person regard
ing his change of front on the national
issue.
They must and do consider that
when the old world went to war. so
in their attitude towards
so careless of the
rights of neutrais and so determined
TO regard nothing but their own adyan.
tages. that any statesman would have
seen the need of preparedness, to
maintain not only cur material rights
but those principles of liberty and in
dependence so much more precious
and so vital to Our existence as q ma
ton and as a self governing people.
IN fact it did not require a statemen
to foresee this necessity. Any man with
common sense, with practical knowl-
edge OF his fellow men, would have
known better than TO have suggested a
year, or IA months ago, that this
question of preparedness is not a
subject" We all know that
his woeful lack OF foresight, this in
excusable failure to understand the
elemental facts of national relations.
las meant the loss of over a year of ef-
Ort along the lines of nranorodrooI