Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 39, Number 81, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 June 1907 — Would Ask Nothing Better. [ARTICLE]

Would Ask Nothing Better.

After twelve years of unexampled prosperity under the Dingley law, wblcli emphasizes in its schedules the policy of protection, a platform wihlgh should declare protection not only unlawful, but a snare, would “make might* Interesting reading,” and give

us a text for a stirring’campaign. And then the result might afford an answer to a question which has long engaged the politicians. What influence secured the Democratic triumph in 1892? Who killed Cock Robin that year? “I,” said the Free Trader. “I did It with my little deliverance against protection,” “Grover,” said the ardent Clevelandlte. “Mr. Cleveland did It with the force of his personality. He w&s the platform.” “The Homestead strike,” said the disgusted Republicans. “But for that General Harrison would have had a walkover.” And so the contention has continued to this day, and still continues. Now, if it was the tariff plank In the Democratic platform which did the work then, why not ask history to repeat itself? Why not next year again challenjjg, protection to another battle to the death? The protectionists would ask nothing better. They would rush to take up such a challenge, and then we should all enjoy the campaign hugely. The tariff would make a lovely issue, and especially in the light of what happened to the Democratic party after it carried the country in 1892 on a free trade platform.—Washington Star.

Kept tn the Dark. A correspondent of the New York Sun, registering his protest against an agreement that must result, as he avers, in turning over to German publishers, who already are able to undersell American makers of picture books, a monopoly of typesetting, plate-mak-ing and book publishing for the United States, remarks: “It is surprising that there was no Congressional representative sufficiently wide awake to foresee and to understand what these German concessions must eventually mean.” If Is only fair to reeall the fact that neither Senators nor Representatives were afforded the slightest clue to what the State Department had up Its sleeve in the matter of diplomatic tariff revision downward. Secretary Root took good care that no member of either house should see his burled ace, and Secretary Shaw retired from the cabinet just in time to know nothing of what was going to be done, though he could suspect. Needless to add that the general body of American producers and wage-earners were kept wholly in the dark.