The President's Letter

In the midst of the Harrison ad ministration, when democratie sentiment was just beginning to congeal a little about men and principies fhat should stand as the representatives of the democratie party and its policies, in the campaign of 1892, at a time when the politician candidates for the presidency were coquetting with every political vagary and men were afraid to declare themselves on any question, Grover Cleveland wrote his famous letter on the silver issue. The politicians with one voice pronounced it the greatest piece of monumental stupidity of the time and declared that it sealed the political doom of the ex-president, and removed him from the list of possibilities for the presidential nomination. The people did not take that view of the matter however. They believed in the rugged honesty and right purpose of the man, and in spite of the utmost efforts of the politicians, the people demanded and secured his nomination and then triumphantly elected him. Now again in a moment of peril to democratie principies, brought about by a few supposed friends of tariff reform, he has written a letter taking the people into his confidence. Once again the politicians have declared that he has made the greatest blunder ever perpetrated by a president of the United States. There is no I question, however, as to the reception of the president's letter by the country. The people are with him in his bold stand for principie and the faithful carrying out of party pledges. There is no doubt that the position of the president is the position of the vast majority of democrats through the country. This is attested by the resolutions of every party convention that has since been held and by the almost unanimous voice of the democratie and independent press of the nation. The letter has had the effect of recalling all democrats who were beginning to waver between a policy of supposed expediency and principie back to their allegiance to principie. It has placed the president in the acknowledged leadership of the party organization, and left the junta of trading democratie protectionists clinging to its ragged edge and in immediate danger of being trampled upon if they do not square themselves with democratie It has served also, to release the great majority of democratie senators from the duress in which they have been held. There are strong evidences also, that it is having the desired effect upon the recalcitrant senators and that as they hear from their constituencies, they are weakening in their loyalty to the trusts inwhose interest they have tried to force legislation. The indications at present are that the senate will recede from its concessions to the trusts and give its support to the revenue idea of the tariff. This is the only idea that should control in tariff legislation and the president has done his party and the country valuable service in the direction of freeing the consumers and the industries of the country from the grip of the money power as represented by the trustsThe letter of the president is statesmanlike and honest and sets forth democratie duty just as the people understand it, and it should thereore extort valuable concessions from the selfishness of the 'icompromise' senators and result in the betterment of the tariff bill. If it does not, then we shall have one more battle for the destruction of the trusts and the extirpation of the niquitous system of protection In any event the battle for commer cial freedom cannot long be der layed. Protection must go.