Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 47, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 December 1893 — A Very Stupid Bluff: [ARTICLE]

A Very Stupid Bluff:

Tom Reed ought to have learned that this is too big a country for even his monumental impudence to frighten with a bluff. When Mr. Reed says that the Democratic party “dare not disturb the tariff, ” in view of the late elections, he says in effect that it dare not execute its commission from the people—dare not fulfill its twenty-times-repeated pledge, now that it for the first time has the power. As we said yesterday, the Democratic party dare not fail to reform the tariff. Nor has it any disposition to shirk its duty. Mr. Reed has developed a wonderful respect for the will of the people since he crowded a force bill through the House after his party had been rebuked and defeated by 1,300,000 majority in Congressional elections in which its record was the direct issue. The tariff was not and could not have been an issue in the elections of Tuesday. The Republicans in Ohio, Massachusetts and lowa used it as a scarecrow, as usual. But in the last two States the Republican plurality was but litte in excess of Harrison’s. The only congressman elected anywhere was a Democrat in Michigan. The Democrats lose no legislature that will elect a senator. Nowhere was there a vote cast that can by any possibility affect the reform of the tariff which the present congress and administration were elected to carry out. The fight was over, that issue was closed last year. By a majority of 1,332,000 in 1890 and over 1,400,000 in 1892, directly upon this as the main issue of the elections, the people decided in favor of tariff reform through tariff reduction. It is imputing childishness or worse to the people to suppose that they were frightened from their deliberate purposo before the bill which they had twice demanded was even drafted. The election of Republican State officers in half a dozen States did not reverse the verdict of the nation. Tariff reform is needed. It has been decreed. It has been promised. It must come. It is coming.—New York World. Jerry Simpson's Views. Speaking of the Republican landslide in the East, Congressman Jerry Simpson, of Kansas, said to a Kansas City Journal man: It was simply the result of a scare among the masses., There are a lot of lunatics In the oonntry who know nothing themselves and were made to believe by the Republican press that the threatened revision of the tariff portended evil to the working classes. Besides this, they blame the Democratic party for the existing business depression, which as a matter of fact, is a result of Iniquitous Republican legislation. The common people are like a man on a raft of saw logs. As one log sinks he jumps to another, hoping to keep himself afloat. They will finally get on the People’s party log, which is big enough to support them, in New Turk the attempt of the machine poll icians to force Maynard upon the people was responsible for the result. McKinley’s election makes him the logical ReSbllcan candidate for President in 1896. The iff question will be the iosue again. We

thought we had settled that question last rear, but President Cleveland shoved It to the rear, and now It has got to be fought over again with the money question, an equally important issue. Now for Tariff Reform! Now let Congress take a whack at the upas tree of tariff oppression.— Nashville American. The country will not treat the McKinley bill with as much gentleness as the people of Ohio have treated McKinley.—Boston Globe. It now behooves Mr. Cleveland to see that McKinley’s tariff law is wiped off the statute books of this nation without undue delay.—Chicago Times. It is now expected that the new tariff bill will be ready in about three weeks from date. No postponement on account of the elections. —Boston Herald. The Democratic administration and Congress cannot let the tariff alone. They are bound by the pledges and by the whole logic oi their position to enter upon the work of revision.—Philadelpnia Press. While the tariff will be revised with a view to lessening the burden of taxation, especially upon materials of manufacture, this policy does not contemplate a reduction of the customs revenue, but rather a more equable distribution.—Philadelphia Times. The next thing in order is to reform the tariff. This should be done at once and vigorously. Let the tariff be reformed and the financial system remain untampered with, and the wait for the return of good times will not be a prolonged one.—lndianapolis Sentinel.

Certainly no evidence is offered by the late elections that the people have repented of their desire, recorded twice over at the polls, first in 1890 and again in 1892, for a moderate and conservative reform of the worse-than-war tariff rates imposed by the McKinley act.—Baltimore Sun. The demand for the reform and revision of the tariff is as strong as it was when the people of the country made it at the ballot-box in November, 1892; and there is no more excuse now than there was then for any failure on the part of the democracy to heed the voice of the people. Detroit Free Press.