Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 20, Number 16, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 October 1898 — THIS THE ONLY ISSUE [ARTICLE]

THIS THE ONLY ISSUE

TERRITORIAL EXPANSION THE PIVOT OF THE CAMPAIGN. President’s Brief,Terse Speeches Have Reached the Hearts of the PeopleRepublicans Rally Around McKinley, and Contest Takes on New Life. Washington correspondence: President McKinley’s Western tour put life into the political campaign. The congressional committees of both parties are realizing this from the reports that come to them.' The principal effect is felt in the West, especially in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and lowa, the States through which the President traveled, and where he made short speeches. But the whole West seems to have felt the new vigor which came from the President’s plain talk about the war and its results. The Republican congressional committee has been hampered by usage, which confines its official efforts to sending out documents and literature relating to subjects upon which the party has either in national convention, in Congress or by act of the Republican President, taken a decided stand. The committee began its work in this campaign on the tariff and the currency questions, because it knew just where the party stood on those questions. It took no stand on the great question of territorial expansion, because no national convention had ever considered that question, 1 Republican Congress had not acted upon, it, and President McKinley had not made public his instructions to the peace commissioners. The committee found much difficulty in arousing Republican enthusiasm over either the tariff or the money question, because the people seemed to, consider those questions practically settled, and were giving their attention to another and more important question, which had been developed by the war with Spain. The flag had been placed over Manila, and Spain had been driven out of the Philippines, as well as out of Cuba and Porto Rico. There has been no mistaking the sentiment of the people regarding the Philippines, but Republican Congressmen, as well as the Republican commission, have hesitated to take a position upon this question until the peace commissioners should act and show to the world what were their instructions front the Republican administration. Another Issue. Some of these gentlemen, a few weeks ago, expressed the belief that the campaign would be fought out on the silver question, but they have changed their minds. Republican Congressmen who have visited Washington in the last three weeks have reported that there is another and a dominant issue, and the Republican party must take Its position on that issue and declare its purpose regarding the fruits and responsibilities of the war. President McKinley went West to attend the Omaha exposition and the peace jubilee at Chicago, lie did not start out on a pleasure tour. It developed, as dki his campaign of 1894, when he left Ohio to make a dozen brief speeches in as many different States and was kept busy talking to the people from the car platform over a trail of about 10,000 miles, which summed up more than 100 speeches to crowds that aggregated several millions of people. The President met the same demonstration from the people on his Western tour. Wherever ho went the people wanted to har him, and instead of three or four speeches, scheduled for him when he left Washington, he made seventy-five talk* of from two minutes’ duration to twenty minutes, and more than a million people heard him. lie knew what the people were thinking about, and he knew they wanted to know what were his purposes regarding the results of the war. He could not speak in detail about questions now in the hands of the peace commissioners, but he could enunciate certain principles which were governing his action* in making a peaceful settlement of all the questions which have been developed by the war. That the President’s speeches have been satisfactory to the Republicans of the West is shown by the reports from Western States to the congressional committee. The Republican Congressmen are more confident of a large vote and victory than they have been at any time since the opening of the campaign, and all over the West it is reported that the Republican candidates are taking their stand on tjii* question of expansion, and declaring their purpose to uphold th«* bands of the President in keeping the American flag where it has been placed by th«* army and navy. The same condition is reported in the East, and the Democrats have recognized the danger of the new lifv in the campaign. Ex-Senator Hill, in the first speech he has made since he left the Senate, began with a defense, claiming that there were no party differences regarding the war, that both parties stood together, and that there was no prospect of party differences in the settlement of the pence negotiations. The wily Senator from New York realized that his party could not hope to win by antagonizing the administration on this issue, and ho sought to pass it over as a war without politic* mid get the people of New York to consider State issues alone.