, 1922-09-23

wfIsoaian remnants in American politics charge
the party in power with a failure TO reduce taxes
to the pre-war level
An advertisement Just put out by the Demo
cratic National Committee, which Is stu within
the control Of President Wilson's friends. laments
the .shrinkare' In our foreign trade since the peak
Of war expectations, a loss OF seventy-fiye billion
dollars in estimated national wealth since the war
and accuses the Harding administration OF fail
ing TO get federal taxes and the cost of living back
to the 1912 basis before the Wilsonians began to
revise them upward.
e Public Ignorance in this country is not so
widespread. despite the efforts Of publications like
the Worlds Work, that it does not keenly realize
what proposition of the twentythree 5iiston dollar
debt went, under the Wilson administration, for
extravaganza, incapaeity and graft. Never besars
had there been witnessed such an orgy Of waste
and worse as that which was staged from Wash
:ngton by an administration which went into the
war backward under the leadership Of piffling pac.
fists like Baker and Daniels.
THE billion that went for aeroplanes with out
putting a battle plane on the war front, the billion
that was poured out for the heavy artillery with
out getting a gun across the Atlantic, the billion
that went for wooden and other ships that never
pulled an anchor, the billion that went for political
operation and Generalization of railroads, the bill
lions that were thrown to the birds in cost plus
contracts in providing at The sellers price sever
al times as many shoes, saddles and other supplies
as ever could have been needed by our army. the
wickedly wRsteful construction Of army canton
ments on unsuitable, high priced sites in the south,
the destruction of hundreds of millions of dollars
in equipment through neglected exposure to the
elements. all this constituted a shameful chapter
OF neglect, ineompetency and crime the blacklist
ever written in American history, If, indeed it has
a parallel in world history for stupidity and crook
eJness.
"This Infamous wholesale neglect of duty and
betrayal of trust by agents of an administration
which boosted up TO the moment we entered war
that it was sGprepared for war because it didn't
believe in war and hadn't anything TO do With the
causes and issues of the European war, surely just
flies calling attention, again and again, to the fact
that of this debt of twenty-three billion dollars fully
half represents a betrayal ana exploitation OF the
American people.
qualifications like Worlds Work, which helped
in and egged on the damnable program ought TO be
slow in calling ii again to mind. That malodorous
remembrance viii cause the American people Il
overlook any mistakes the Republicans may have
made in the herculean task of cleaning up the
~frightful mess, and decline TO again accept the lead
ership which made the people realize that When
sherman said war was, hell, he didn't half realize
the possibilities of war as waged by such an out
fit.
"World's Work, speaking from the viewpoint OF
the Europeanism it represents, also objects to the
repetition by the Republican National COMMITTEE
of standard arguments for protection, complaining
that they were also used in the day of Benjamin
Harrison, Arguments for the protective system GO
further back than that; they were used by Abra-
ham Lincoln, by Henry Clay, by Andrew Jackson
and by George Washington. The fact that such
arguments we're SO used would discredit them with
publications engaged in carrying on European pro
paganda, but despite the claim that protectionisn
- III A1AAA VI AA1 ahOh1 ~ A9 A1ltAN 1IN III al
extreme form by England herself ought to convince
Worlds Work that it ommen itself even to the
most enlightened nations.
"The complaint of Worlds Work that the Cleye
land panic of 1898 was really an inheritance from
the Harrison administration, and that the tariff
passed under Cleveland had nothing to do with
it, is a moss grown Democratic argument with
which people generally are familiar. But the ques
ton arises, that being the case, why was it that
with no change in the laws of the country except
the repeal of the Wilson tariff law and the enact
ment of the Dingley law, the armies of the unem
ployed were mustered out and prosperity returned
continuing without serious interruption until the
of the Underwood tariff law in 1914
when the conditions of 1894 began to repeat them,
selves and in the ensuing months we had the SAME
experience with armies of the unemployed, bread
lines andssoup houses until tie European war re
lieYed the situation, and put american factories
to work making war supplies.
despite the objection of the political supermer
of the Wilson era and all their supers in editorial
sanctums and elsewhere Republicans will continue
to call attention to the well remembered facts In
with the Wilson administration, which
no amount of s~ophistry or sentimental sob stuff
from the erstwhile press agents of the new freedom
can chloroform the American people into forgetting
The Wilsonians should devote their intelligence, II
any, to the best means of making the American
people forget what happened under Wilson, for
paraphrasing a famous orator, it may truly be said
that when that subject is revived, the past rises
before us like q nightmare"