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Show Joyous, But Not Logical CHAMP CLARK has a great sense o humor, but he is not always logical. He says the Republicans are grieved to death over the prosperity pros-perity of the country, meaning the prosperity that has come (because of a Democratic administration. adminis-tration. Inasmuch as all the present prosperity comes through supplying the belligerents of Europe Eu-rope with war material arms, ammunition, food, clothing, mules, horses, etc., then to be logical if the prosperity is due to the Democratic administration, admin-istration, that same administration to make the prosperity, must be responsible for the war. Certainly Cer-tainly the great party would not ascribe all the prosperity that has come through its ministrations ministra-tions to a foreign cause. We suspect that Mr. Clark would have trouble in giving us a bill of particulars. He, like his President, must see that one great need of this country is a merchant mer-chant marine. Suppose he were called upon to outline a plan for handling our sea-going commerce com-merce in a business way, what would he give us? From the time that he stood at his mother's knee, and with his mother's milk imbibed Democratic Demo-cratic principles, his idea of ships and their use has been precisely like old man Carlton's, who was United States commissioner here from Terre Haute, Ind. He was discussing the tariff one day and the wickedness of paying subsidies to already rich ship owners and said: "A ship is precisely like a camel; if a merchant in Joppa wants to send a caravan load of merchandise to Damascus, he hires the cheapest train of camels that he can find for that purpose," and no argument argu-ment could shake his conclusion. The fact that a merchant should have his own camel train, have his own camel drivers, see that his goods were delivered and if his Damascus friends wanted anything else, or what the merchant In Damascus had to exchange for the goods, or what was being produced in the neighborhood cf Damascus, that might foe of use in Joppa none of these things had any impression on old man Carlton, for they were contrary to Democratic Demo-cratic principles as he imbibed them from away back; and when asked how an American ship could carry goods in competition with an English Eng-lish ship that had a subsidy which was sufficient to pay for all the coal burned between ports, he replied, "That the thing to do is to send them by the English ship." And when asked if It would not be better to patronize American ship " owners rather than the very rich English shipowners, ship-owners, he declared that "anything would be better bet-ter than to build up bloated monopolies in this country," and that, in his judgment, closed the debate. Champ Clark is vastly more intelligent that old man Carlton was, but he has the same views on American shipping that old man Carlton Carl-ton had, and while he must have been a good deal shaken up over the situation as it has been presented during the past eighteen months, we M have no idea that his mind has been in the least M changed inv regard to American shipping, or that M he has reached any fixed conclusion as to how - M our flag can be restored to the sea. While they M will not admit it, the constitution that has gov- H erned the party now in power since the fourth M of March, 1913, has been that constitution that 'M was tenderly composed and laid away in the ,M grave of the dead Confederacy. |