Brass Tacks At Washington

1916

Judge Hughes and the Republican Party are challenged in the new Democratic National Textbook to speak out for or against the record of achievement made by President Wilson and the Democrats.

The challenge is issued in twenty-one brief, direct and pointed questions addressed to Judge Hughes and the Republicans by the Democratic National Committee and the Democratic Congressional Committee. All the large issues, domestic and international, are treated. The questions carry the caption "Appeal for Light for Sixteen Million Voters: Let Mr. Hughes and the Republican Party Answer."

These questions are:

1. Do you favor repeal of the Federal Reserve Act passed by a Democratic Congress, recommended and approved by President Wilson, under which the danger of financial panics is forever banished from the United States?

2. Would you have protested against the violation of Belgian neutrality and have backed the protest by plunging America into the European carnival of slaughter?

3. Do you favor repeal of the Rural Credits Act, passed by a Democratic Congress, recommended and approved by President Wilson, which gives long-term credit at interest rates that promise an annual saving of $150,000,000 to the farmers?

4. Would you have recognized Victoriano Huerta as President of Mexico?

5. Do. you favor repeal of the Clayton Anti-trust Act, passed by a Democratic Congress and approved by President Wilson, which overthrew the principle that the labor of a human being is a mere commodity of commerce?

6. Will you, Mr. Hughes, recommend, and will the Republican Party in Congress support a law establishing universal compulsory military service in the United States?

7. Do you advocate repeal of the Federal Trade Commission Act, passed by a Democratic Congress, recommended and approved by President Wilson, which has given so much assistance to legitimate business enterprises and under which adequate protection against unfair competion is provided?

8. Mr. Hughes, would you have tried the policy of diplomatic negotiation as a means of summoning the moral force of law and neutral opinion to stop Germany's illegal use of submarines?

9. Do you favor repeal of the "porkless" Good Roads Act, passed by a Democratic Congress and approved by President Wilson, for the development of rural highways?

10. Would you, Mr. Hughes, have broken relations with Germany and sent our young men by the hundreds of thousands to nameless graves at the bottom of the Atlantic or in Flanders before the policy of diplomatic negotiation had had thorough trial?

11. Will you undertake to repeal the income tax, passed by a Democratic Congress, recommended and approved by President Wilson, which places a just share of the burden of taxation upon those best able to bear it?

12. Do you favor violating neutrality and risking the future safety of your country by placing an embargo on munitions of war?

13. Do you favor repeal of the Agricultural Extension Act, passed by a Democratic Congress, recommended and approved by President Wilson, which for the first time provides facilities for carrying direct to the farmer practical scientific knowledge of how to increase the profits of his farm?

14. Do you favor intervention in Mexico?

15. Do you advocate repeal of the Grain Standards and Warehouse Acts, passed by a Democratic Congress, recommended and approved by President Wilson, which aid commerce in the great staple cereals and enable owners of stored agricultural products to secure loans on warehouse receipts on better terms?

16. What is your attitude towards the disloyalists of your party who have attempted to prevent the enforcement by President Wilson, both on the part of the American government and by all American citizens, of an honest neutrality towards all the warring nations of Europe?

17 Inasmuch as the largest amount collected in any one year under the highest tariff ever enacted (Payne-Aldrich Act) was $333,000,000, what form of taxation would you substitute to pay a "Preparedness" cost of $630,000,000?

18. Do you favor the reactionary Republican plan of granting huge subsidies to favored corporations, money collected from the people by taxation, as the best way of encouraging the development of an American merchant marine?

19. Do you favor repeal of the Child Labor Law, the Anti-Injunction Law, the Seaman's Act and related social justice measures of high importance, passed by a Democratic Congress and recommended and approved by President Wilson?

20. Do you favor re-enactment of the Payne-Aldrich Act which betrayed your party's campaign pledge of 1908 and which has been repudiated by many Republican and all Progressive leaders?

21. Do you stand with those Progressives and progressive Republicans in Congress who voted for practically all the progressive measures mentioned above, or do you stand with the reactionary Republicans who voted against them?

In conclusion, the two Democratic Committees say,

"President Wilson and the Democratic Party submit their case to the American people on the record they have made. Broadly speaking that is the issue of the campaign. Upon the public survey and estimate of that record depends the outcome of the election.

"If, as charged by you, Mr. Hughes, and your supporters, that record is bad and does not justify the continued confidence of the country it will become your duty, if elected, to do all in your power to change that record. We submit that in all fairness the American people, for whose verdict you are contesting, are entitled to know how much of this record you and your party will attempt to destroy if placed in power."

—The Fryeburg Post, Fryeburg, Maine, Sept. 12, 1916, p. 8.

Against Taxing Wealth

1916

The high priests in their search for some vital and appealing issue against the Democratic party have hit upon another dangerous one.

They are squarely on record, as the Post pointed out yesterday, in opposition to the eight-hour day for railroad workers, and the other working men of the United States are asking themselves what this ominous assault means. Nor can they be blamed if they become convinced that the Republican party is identified with the capitalists and the big "interests." Or if they feel that logically Mr. Hughes and a Republican Congress — if such should be the results of the election — would at once move to repeal the railroad eight-hour law. The bosses can only blame themselves and their candidate for the feeling that the party has no sympathy this year for the aspirations and hopes of labor.

But there is another issue just as likely to burn the fingers of the G. O. P. orators and leaders. It is opposition to the taxation of wealth.

Already the business has begun. Assaults on the income tax law here in other States are now under way. The people are being told how iniquitous it is that the south pays so little of this tax and the north so much, as if that were some fault of the law. The logic of this is almost incredibly clumsy.

Our extraordinarily rich and prosperous northern states, Massachusetts among the rest, pay more income tax to the support of the federal government for the simple and sufficient reason that the wealth is here to be taxed. There isn't a southern state but would rejoice with exceeding great joy if from its borders went to the national treasury at Washington as much money as goes from Massachusetts, for that would mean that it was rich, that many of its citizens had great incomes which were doing their share in the Federal support.

Idle wealth was never justly taxed in these United States until the passage of the Democratic income tax law. On the shoulders of the poor rested by far the heavier burden. Now come the Republican stump speakers and attack this fairest and squarest form of taxation ever devised on the absurd ground that it is "sectional," keeping silent about the fact that wealth is taxed wherever found, whether north, south, east or west.

Against the eight-hour day and against the taxation of hitherto hidden and evading riches — that's where the Republican party is headed, if it is not already there. — The Boston Post.

Mr. Bryan's Position on Candidates

1911

Mr. Bryan's requirement that the Democratic presidential candidate next year must be one who supported the nominee of that party in 1896, 1900 and 1908 evokes the sarcastic wonder why he does not include 1904 or 1892, when Mr. Bryan voted for Weaver, or 1872 when Horace Greeley ran. But the answer is plain enough. Br. Bryan Was not the candidate those other years.


The Canal

All discussion of legislation respecting the Panama canal is interesting, and now is the time for it. That is one subject about which there should be no politics. All want the canal completed as soon as possible, and conducted successfully when completed: Let there be no delay about settling the question of fortifications, of tolls, of the general features of management. The president is fully informed about and alive to the situation, and congress should give prompt heed to his recommendations.


Habit Grows

"I hate to see a little country buying its first battleship."
"Why?"
"Reminds me of a boy taking his first smoke."


Many who think they mean right are right mean.

If some man were compelled to pay as they go they would stay.

Lincoln's Party No More

Feb. 1914

Hundreds of thousands of American citizens paid tribute last week to the memory of Abraham Lincoln. To many of them who, entering upon the threshold of manhood, cast their first vote for that great man, there must have been painful thoughts of the decay and downfall of the party his election brought into power.

The Republican party in 1860 was the exponent of a great moral idea. As such it swept every northern state except one and elected Lincoln President by a popular plurality of 491,195 and an electoral plurality of 108. Fifty-two years later the Republican party, which had long ceased to be a party of a moral idea and had degenerated into an instrument of special privilege, crumbled to the ground. Only two lesser states, Utah and Vermont, gave their paltry eight electoral votes to the party candidate.

We do not believe, however, Lincoln would shed a tear, were he on earth today, over the party's downfall. It was a principle, not a party name, that he stood for. The Republican party of 1912 had the form but not the substance, the body but not the soul, of Lincoln's party. Lincoln's party ceased to be when selfish and unscrupulous men embezzled the prestige and throttled the principles of the organization. — Baraboo Democrat.