The News & Observer

MORE STRADDLING.

McKinley is said to be the author of the money plank in the platform of the Ohio Republican Convention. It is a bold-faced plagiarism of the plank in the last Democratic National platform, and, in the light of recent events, is a straddle that will deceive nobody.

It gives the promise of bi-metallism to the ear, but breaks it to the hope.

The people do not want any more "straddlers." The gold men and the silver men are agreed on one point, and that is that they will not longer submit to declarations that mean nothing.

McKinley is a gold man or he is not. Everybody knows that, while lacking the nerve and manliness of Mr. Cleveland, he would veto a free coinage bill just as quick. Why not say so plainly, so that the voters will know where he stands? The silver men and the gold men both will have more respect for him than the pitiable exhibition he made of himself in Chicago and in his own State Convention.

The time has passed on the money question when a man can "look two ways for Sunday." The Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde act cannot be successfully played in the future. Everybody seems to have found this out except the Ohio Republicans. It is one more evidence that in that State there is more hypocrisy and pretense, more straddling and shiftiness, more politics on the Pecksniffian and Uriah Heep order than anywhere else in the world.