Democratic Sentinel, Volume 7, Number 36, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 October 1883 — The Real Platform. [ARTICLE]

The Real Platform.

From time to time the leaders of the Republican party hold conventions in which they formulate certain moral axioms and platitudes which they call the platform of the party. The real platform of the party, however, is expressed in private and personal letters exchanged between these leaders after the mummery of the convention is over. What that platform is appears more clearly from the abstract we publish elsewhere of the campaign correspondence of the party in 1880. This, the real platform, may be written in one line: We want money. That is the real Reublican platform. On this point the harmony and union are universal. Blaine writes to Dorsey that in failing to send money to Maine he is “imperiling the whole campaign.” Allison writes to Jewell: “Money must be had and must be sent to Indiana.” Stewart Woodford writes to Jewell from West Virginia: “With $25,000 Sturgiss and Atkinson can make an effective campaign.” John F. Lewis, Mahone’s lieutenant, writes: “The expenditure.of $50,000 will insure the electoral vote of Virginia for Garfield and Arthur, ‘Help us, Cassius, or we sink.’ * Mr. Henderson, of lowa, write to Dorsey: “Put money in thy purse.” K Smith, of the Cincinnati Gazette, who has been called the Good Deacon Richard Smith, was alive to the need of money. He writes: “There should be $50,000 judiciously placed in each of these States [Ohio and Indiana] within the next ten days.” Charlie Foster, sometimes known as Calico Charlie, says that he has given the question some attention and that “we ought to have $49,000 —$10,000 of it for Cleveland. ” The Massachusetts reformers, through John M. Forbes, sent money to West Virginia and Indiana. . John C. New called aloud for money and gave thanks when it came. Everybody wanted money. What did they want it for ? The Republican party claims to have saved the nation, to have paid off the debt, settled the finances and pensioned the soldiers. It has held power for twenty odd years. It has taken credit to itself for the prosperity of the country ; has had all the support of capital, of protected interests, of the army of officeholders and of all privileged classes. Yet when a national election came around, when a great national battle was to be fought, the grand old party could find only one battle-cry. Danger of defeat changed all its boasting into abject terror, and its platform shrank to a single line — Resolve I, That we must have money. —New York World.