Rensselaer Republican, Volume 27, Number 22, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 January 1896 — Governor McKinley’s Prophecy. [ARTICLE]

Governor McKinley’s Prophecy.

Considering the verdict of the people in 1893, 1894 and 1895, the following extract from a Bpeech made by Hon. Wm, McKinley, at the annual dinner of the Republican League of Ohio in honor of Lincoln’s Birthday, delivered on February 14, 1893, seems almost prophetic: It was in this year, 1892, while in the enjoyment of unexampled prosperity, that the Republican legislation which made this condition was, as the Democratic leaders would have us believe, repudiated by the people, and the Demcratic policy of British Free-Trade and wildcat money indorsed. Ido not believe it. If they act upon that belief they will be promptly repudiated by the people. Not only has the year 1892 registered an era of conspicuous progress and unexampled prosperity, but it witnessed a National administration under President Harrison unexcelled in honesty, power, and patriotism by any of its predecessors. Of this rich inheritance the Democratic party becomes the trustee for the people. It is my hope that it may suffer no loss or waste in their hands. I wish the country could he assured it would not. If it does, the trust will come back to us—and it will come back to us with the doubly-renewed confidence of the people.

One of the Old Free-Trade Theories. It is mighty interesting reading to look over the files of the Democratic papers during the campaign period of 1892. When we recollect how the shoddy factories of Yorkshire have been running day and night during 1895, and note the millions of pounds of rags and shoddy that we have imported during our first year of free wool, it is rather amusing to recall what the English editor of the New York Evening Post said, Novemher 21, 1892. with the flush of victory blazing and blustering upon his shoddy countenance. Here it is: " “Even supposing q complete re-

vision of the Tariff could not be made in the spring, consider what might be done in the way of commending Tariff reform to the country, and re storing hope and confidence to industry in general by simply taking the duty off one article—wool. This would at once start one of our most important industries, the woolen industry, which has long been languishing, into renewed activity. Clothing, blankets, prime necessaries of life-would promptly feel the effect of it. The shoddy mills would shut U p with much cursing aiid execration of FreeTraders, but the poor: man would get a coat whose cheapness and durability would, far from making him a ‘cheap man,’ increase his self respect as well rb his temperature, and he would go to sleep under a real woolen blanket, and not a McKinley cotton or shoddy simulacrum.” The “cheap man” now, with his cheap wages or no wages, has plenty of time to go to sleep under a Yorkshire shoddy blanket if he can afford that, cheap article. Many of them suffer, uncovered, under leafless trees, hardly to dream, but to think of the good old American wbbl blankets of McKinley times.