Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 39, Number 3, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 September 1906 — A REPUBLICAN PRINCIPLE [ARTICLE]

A REPUBLICAN PRINCIPLE

Is ..Unconsciously Endorsed By Demo- ‘ ’ cratic Newspapers-r-Trade at "i Here. (St Louie Globe Democrat.) The Moberly Democrat says that “'if there is a factory of any kind in ,thc"city"making“anytting that can be ; used in your home city, it is your duty tn patronize- it. lust as It i? the duty ct others to buydrem home merchants vfhen they can find what, they want.” TnT copying this expression the Jef~ ferson City Tribune (Dem.) indorses it, and adds on its own account: 1 There is just one way to make a city, 1 and that is to patronize home mer- ; chants and industries, even if you can save a few cents by going elsewhere.” I All this is good Republican doctrine, but the Republicans extend it farther. ' They do 1 not restrict it to any city or i state, out they make it cover the whole nation. When the Republicans I say, “Patronize home merchants and 1 industries,” they do not mean merely 1 the industries and the merchants of St. Louis, Chicago, Boston or Jefferson City. They mean those of the entire.. United States. In carrying out their doctrine the Republicans, by a tariff system which 1 has given a preference to the Ameri- ; can over the European or the Asiatic ! producer, has built up an industrial fsystem which has placed—America ; far in the lead of all the rest of the countries of the world in the variety and the scope of its activities, ahd 1 they have made the American people the most prosperous persons on the globe. 1 To the Democrats, however, just as to Hancock long ago. the patronizing of home industries is only a local issue. Like the Jefferson and the Moberly editors, their view is shut in by the few thousand persons of their own little parish. They knoir nothing and care nothing about about the people and the interests of therest of their state and country. Louisiana shrieks for protection for the sugar planter, but she howla against protection for the sheep raiser, the lead producer and woolen and the cottton manufacturer. If the doctrine of the Jefferson City and theMoberly editors had been followed by the Republican party Joplin would be as dead in 1906 as it was when De ] Soto went down through that country. This parochialism prevents the Democratic party frhm ever becoming a national organization. It is obstructed by local prejudices and boundaries, j The Democrat is constitutionally pro- . hibited from thinking or acting nation- [ ally. The only national organization 1 which the United States has is the Republican party.