The Two Platforms

While the tarilï and flnancial planks of the Republican and Democratie platforms deservedly have a large share of the public attention, there are certain other differenees between them that ought not to be overlooked. The presence of a large Populist, and even anarchist, element in the Chicago convention was noed at the time, and had its infhience in dictating the platform and inaking the nominations. It found plain expression in the following paragraph of the platform adopted: "We denounce arbitrary interference by federal authorities in local affairs as a violation of the constitution of the United States and a crime against free institutions, and we especially object to governraent by injunetion as a new and highly dangerous form of oppression, by which federal judges. in contempt of the laws of the states and the rights of oitizens, befiome at once legislators, judges and exeeutioners. " The plain intent oí this is to deny to the general frovernment the right to protect its ow] : l property or its postal service wl u interstate commerce is imperiled by riots. It is simply a reflection of Governor Altgeldt's protest against the use of government troops to protect the mails and public property at the time of the Chicago strike riots, af ter Altgeldt himself had shown his incapacity to deal with the mob, and when not only the railroad and ernment property, but the city itself was in (langer. Tho same hostility to the constitutional and orderly conduct of public afïairs is found in the covert threat, found in the Chicago platform, to reorganize the supreme court. After deploring the decisión of the supreme court on the income tax, the platform, continúes: "We declare that it is the duty of congress to use all constitutional power which remains after that decisión, or which may come from its reversal by the court as it may hereafter be constituted, so that the burdens of taxation may be equally and impartially laid." This means nothing less than that the men who made the platform propose, if they come into power, to f orce resignations from the present bench and to fill the vacancies with judges appointed with a special view to overturning the iucome tax decisión, or else to accomplish the same purpose by increasing the number of judges, the new ones to be appointed with the same design. In either case the purpose is essentially revolutionary in its character. The omissions of the Democratie platform are hardly less offensive to the patriotic voter than its utterances. With the exeeption of a single mild sentence of sympathy to the people of Cuba in their heroic struggle for liberty and independence, it has not a single word upon our foreign relations, nothing about the Hawaiian affairs which the present administration so badly bungled; nothing about the attempted British aggressions in Venezuela; nothing about the application of the Monroe doctrine to that affair; about our interests in Nicaragua and the West Indies. The Republican platform, on the other hand, reasserts the Monroe trine toitsfullextent, and reaffirmsthe right of the United States to give the doctrine effect bv responding to the appealsof any American state for friendly intervention in cases of European encroachment. It gives generous expression of sympathy to the Cubans in their determined contest for liberty anl declares that the United States should actively use !ts influence and g-ood offices to restore peace and give independence to the island. It declares that the Nicaragua canal should be built, ovvned and operated by the United States, and that by the purchase of the Danish slands we should secure a much üeeded naval station in the West Iniies Finally, referring to the destruction of American property in Armenia, it declares that, there and sverywhere, American citizens and American property must be absolutely protected, at every hazard and at any ;ost, The one platform, as if ashamed oí the colorless and unpatriotic poliey of the present administration, is almost absolutely silent on foreign affairs. The other g-ives olear enunciation of our claims and demands as a ielf-respecting power among the nations of the earth. The Republican platform also de:lares in favor of the early American policy of discriminating duties for the upbuildinff of our rnerchant marine, for th ■.; continuedenlargementof ournavy, md for a complete system of harbor ind seacoast defenses; for a free and Unrestricted ballot for every American jitizen, with a fair count of the bailóte Ihus cast; fa vors a national board of irbitration for the settlement of difterences between employers and employedengagedin interstate commerce; favors an immediate return to the free iomestead policy of the Republican party, and denounces the uncivilized ind barbarous practice of lynching. Upon all these questiona of internal idministration the Democratie platr 'orm is entirely silent That platform s, in faet, so much taken up with the idvocacy of a falso system of finance md the denunciation of accumulated .vealth, that it had little space for dec.arations in respect to good governnent, even if the heterogeneous mass Jiat composed the convention had feit lay inclinatimi to consider the subject.