Why They Are Mistaken

ÍSome of our republican brethren rub their hands and smile with the sort of expression that says, "aha now we'have got you where we want you," when they speak of the democratie demand for lowering taxation. But the wish is father to the thought. No humbug cries of "free trade," etc. will avail. The question simply is, shall the war tax prevail, Shall the people continue to pay needless taxation? Many republicans are disgusted with the stand their party is taking upon the question. Says the Lansing State Republican. Is the Republican party of Michigan in favor of relieving the American people of needless taxation, whose effect is to pile up the hardearned money of the taxpayers in an idle surplus in the National treasury, there to debauch politics and legislation, and encourage extravagance and dishonesty ? If so, now is a very proper time to speak right out and say so squarely and pointedly. W e beheve it is. But nobody can find any such idea in the Grand Rapids soft soap and putty platform. The Hon. A. P. Fitch, a republican congressman from New York City, in a speech on the Mill's bill made May 16, told his republican collegues, that he was elected from a district with 5,000 democratie majority largely because his democratie opponent had opposed any measure of tariff reform and refused to vote for the Morrison bill. He warns the party, that ifit opposes the cause of tariff reform it must elect its candidates without the vote of New York. He says, he is told that this can be done. "It is a favorite theory apparently of those gentlemen who have decided that the city workingmen who gave the most outspoken and determined free trader in this country, Mr. Henry George, 6S,ooo votes at an election, when we could only get 60,000 votes for so good a candidate as Theodore Roosevelt, are wild with enthusiasm for the solute maintenance of the present tariff and those over wise leaders of the party whose declared policy isj to aliénate the Germán voters who are still true to the republican party, in order to please the prohibitionists who laugh at their concessions and have always sought and always will seek, the downfall of that party." And we could append much other republican opinión of the same nattye. The exodus from the party will be large this fall.