Evening Republican, Volume 16, Number 251, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 October 1912 — PLATFORMS OF TWO PARTIES COMPARED [ARTICLE]

PLATFORMS OF TWO PARTIES COMPARED

Working and Business Men May Readily Understand * the Protective Planks. The platforms of the Republicans and Democrats are not so complex in phraseology but a working or business man who can read may readily compare them to his own understanding. There is a difference between the two platforms which every voter should know about The Republican platform declares for a continuance of the protective tariff; the Democratic platform declares against a protective tariff and in favor of a tariff for revenue only. Everybody does not understand what this means, but everybody should, because the failure to understand this difference in 1893 closed a great many factories, cut down wages all along the line, put thousands out of employment and opened a good many souphouses. The tariff of 1893 was the Wilson tariff, fathered by Professor Wilson, a Virginia college professor. The tariff recommended by the Democratic platform this year Is supported by another college professor also named Wilson, coming from New Jersey. There never was a tariff platform prepared by college professors that did not result in injury to the workingmen and business of the country. Put one of these college professors behind the merchant’s counter and see how he would run the business. Put him in the shop, or at the bench, and. see if he could .fill a workman’s place. The difference between a protective tariff and a tariff for revenue is this: A protective tariff is, as its name implies, a tariff high enough to protect the American wage the American shop from the intrusion of the cheaper foreign labor or the products of the cheaper foreign shop, ident McKinley explained this and the workingmen and business men of the country understood him and supported him. The Democratic platform declares that we have no constitutional right to protect the American wage-earner or the American shop or the American manufacturer by putting a tax on the products of foreign labor and that the only excuse for this tax is because we must levy it to secure the revenues to support our government.