Wood County Reporter

The business of interviewing prominent politicians on the prospects for the next presidential campaign begins rather early this season, and Hon. Jere Black is the first victim. Naturally, he has not much to say about the prospects of a crop still two years distant, but he is sure that Hancock will come to the front again. Of course he will, for don't we know who would go into the cabinet if he should by any chance be elected? But it was cruel, doubly cruel, to spring the tariff question upon Judge Black: because he is from Pennsylvania, while his ablest party associates favor free trade, and because people have not yet forgotten his favorite little speech about a "local issue." But the judge is not far behind the general, for he declares in favor of "fair trade," which is a preciously meaningless phrase, much to be commended to anxious democrats who hail from protective states. The reported interview has not the slightest significance except as showing that people absolutely refuse to worry themselves at this date about the next presidential campaign, and as indicating a happy way to escape the revenue issue at which both parties tremble. "Fair trade" would be a beautiful motto for a transparency. Perhaps the intelligent tariff commission will tell us what it means.