LAMENTS CONDITION OF G. O. P. 'S MORALS

Tutor in the Division of History, Government, and Economics

The state of moral degenerateness in which, the Republican party finds itself today is, in my opinion, the outgrowth of policies to which the party has been addicted for the last twenty-five years. The Republican party has been supported very largely by manufacturers who have been many times paid for their financial backing by tariff legislation which has enabled them to charge exorbitant prices to the American consumer, particularly the American farmer. The Fordney tariff Act has increased prices to the American consumer about 4 billion dollars a year--at least 87 per cent or which goes to American manufacturers in higher prices. The Republican party has deliberately sacrificed the American farmer to the manufacturer. The farmer is compelled to buy on this protected market while he is obliged by the nature of his crops to sell on a world competitors market which protective tariffs a mile high cannot control.

Names Many Insidious Abuses

The use of government machinery thus to increase the profits of a few business men explains why the Republicans spent $8,100,000 in the 1920 campaign, compared with Democratic expenditures of $2,237,000. It explains why they refused to unseat Senator Newbury who clearly violated the Corrupt Practices Act. Out of this vicious tariff lobbying and out of campaign expenditures amounting to millions, have inevitably grown the insidious abuses of which the Harding administration has been guilty--the oil leases; land frauds; the Verterans Bureau scandal; secret tax refunds; illegal liquor withdrawals; stopping the prose cution of "friends" of the administration.

No president, coming into office the way President Coolidge came in, could expect to pull a party guilty of such practises out of its hole. But President Coolidge, in my opinion, has handled the situation about as badly as it could be handled. He was given the country a lot of platitudes, but people soon get tired of platitudes, especially when the President doesn't stand by them. He took no action until forced to do so by public opinion. He then forced Denby, who had never been accused of dishonesty, out of office after he said he would not let an innocent man suffer. And he forced Daughterly out of office upon a technicality many months later--but before he was given the hearing which the President originally said he should receive. That some Republicans are unable to learn anything from experience, was illustrated by Senator Pepper's "Keynote" speech in which he attempted to minimize the sins of the present administration by saying they were very little ones--and by saying that the Democratic party was just as bad. The demands of the Republican press and of large business men, that the investigations be called off because "they hurt business" and delay tax reduction, show how blind they are to the situation in which the Republican party has been placed