Democratic Sentinel, Volume 8, Number 13, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 April 1884 — THE PEOPLE’S PARTY. [ARTICLE]

THE PEOPLE’S PARTY.

A Notable Effort by a Distinguished Indiaiiian. Republicanism Has Made Our Government a Jobber in u ood-Pulp,Meta lie Blooms and Other Wares in tlie “Vaniy Fair” of Prohibition. Prohibitory Duties Mean Fly, Rust and Weevil for Wheat, and Inferior Demands, Secondary Markets and the Lowest Prices for American Products and Fabrics. The following very eloquent speech was made by Judge Turpie, of Indianapolis, formerly of this Congressional District, at the Iroquois Club, in Chicago, Tuesday night of last week. He spoke to the toast, “The Party of the People.”— He said: “Mr. President and • Gentlemen—The party of the people must abide with them. Its success, its failure, must depend upon how far it is. and continues to be, the true exponent of popular rights and interests. Power is constantly stealing from the many to the few; not always by the same course, or in the same way.— Hence the necessity at a certain period in the country’s history to read aloud with emphasis to make prominent some particular chapter in the charter qf liberty; at another'time, another. The encroachment of unauthorized power must be met and repelled in the line of their attack. “It is said ‘the Congress shall have power to levy and collect taxes, duties, imports and excises.’ i axes and duties thus stand together; they are mentioned in the same section and line, as it were, in the same breath of the organic law The term ‘collect’ defines the purpose of this power. A levy without collection is a barren procedure. A spheme of taxation which brought no money to the exchequer would be jusly deemed unwarranted, idle and nugatory. " hat then must be thought of a scheme of dqties a great part of which is framed without even the purpose of collection, deliberately planned not to induce, but to prevent and prohibit, receipts by the treasury.” “The fiscal method of the Federal Constitution is plain, simple. It is that of absolute free trade as between the States: FAIR TRAD* WITH AI.L the world besides. J his mode of taxation, the imposition of duties upon imports, is expressly prohibited to the States, and althcfugh it is a very old and well-known incident of municipal authority, it is by consequence also prohibited to the cities, although it has been full} exercised by corporations of much less importance and much 1 connected with the general welfare. It was fOl bidden to the States and cities of the Union, but for the last twenty years, under the auspices of that party which is called “Republican,” this power has been in effect freely delegated to private corporations, even to partnership composed of ten, of five, in one instance of only three persons. To these bodies, politically wholly irresponsible; to these indescribably minute animalcules of the body politic, has been fully granted the power to impose duties upon imports, and they have used that power for their own profit and advantage, without a thought to the public interests. Under this system, the general Government of the United States, stopping from its high functions, has become a jobber, a salesman behind the counter, for holders and owners of ligneous pulp, metallic blooms, and a variety of other wares ' in the “vanity fair’ of prohi

bition too numerous to mention. \ “National powers should be used for National purposes.— Any other use of them is an abuse which must sooner or later entail upon us the consequences of political and financial discredit and disaster.— Taxation, lawful and necessary, is not tyranny; but an unconditional and compulsory exaction for the sole end of private gain, is not taxation; # XT IS TRIBUTE. In reading very many of the clauses of the present enactment upon the subject of duties upon imports one. migh t well conclude the whole multitude of consumers had, by the terms of some former conquest, by the conditions of some former surrender of their rights, become hereditary bondsmen, tributary serfs of the lords and barons of the lobby of monopoly. And if a word be whispered of ‘reform’ loud remonstrance is heard; much anxiety is either felt or feigned concerning the effect of reformatory measures upon the business interests of the country. What, then, is the business interests of the country? The business of the country is that avocation in which most of it s inhabitants are engaged; its interest is that which may tend to the profit or advantage thereof The last census of our population shows that nearly one-half of the persons engaged in industrial pursuits of any kind are employed in farming. If this number be added to the number engaged in the handling (f transportation of farm products and in the manufacture and sale of agricultural implements and machinery, who are really as much engaged in farming as if they followed the plow—it will be found that • the number of those engaged directly and indirectly m the tillage of the soil vastly exceeds th'e number of those in any other calling, and very largely exceeds the numbey of those eng aged in all other inc ustrial pursuits practical among our people.— The marts and seaports of the world, the daly quotations upon the intei national price lists, the odium of that strange vernacular, almost become a universal language, the patois or Vits” and “calls,” of “options, margins and futures,” give the same account, make the same return. Wheat, cotton, com, the secondary products of beef, lard, pork; the production and sale of these arc the special business and avocation of the people of the United States. There is no gilded, romance of arithmetic; there is no kaleidoscopic array of numerals that can conceal the body of this truth, or disguise its character. How co’d or should it be otherwise? We have here a wide country, in its whole extent one vast plantation. The husbandman draws his furrow across a continent; the lands he works are WASHED BY TWO OCEANB a thousand leagues apart. No government of either ancient or modem times has included within its territorial limits an arable area so large, so fertile, so diversified in its productions. The orchards of this plantation would make principalities, the meadows kingdoms. the tillable acres subject to the dominion of the plowshare would make a continent like that of Europe, and moved thither would largely transmul e that historic sea,the Mediterranean, i t > dry land beside. Attica was not more distinctly the home of philosphy, Judea of theology, Italy of arms, than the United States is the home and sphere of Agriculture. ’Tis said, Brittania rules the sea;’ it may be said more truly, the great Republic rules the soil, keeps the new garden of Hesperides, | and guards the granary of the i world.

“We have heard of a land lowing with milk and honey: he land of the vine and the ig tree, of the orange and nyrtle; we have heard of Erin, he ever green isle of the sea, and of the harp and the shamock, whose noble and gallant ons have fought for and .cliieved liberty in every clime nd under every sky except heir own. Our country is aore than these, it is the land if promise, and it is still that >etter country, it is the land of lerformance, it is the land of ood, of corn, the Egypt of the mbitable globe. Israel and .ill his sons, with the unnumbered descendents of Shem <md Japhet, may send hither .or supplies. ’Tis true, that •vhere the rivers meet each >ther, or where the pathways >f iron which gird us together ross or congregate we have ertain unwailed places called vities, but these have not

changed the general appearance of the country or the •haracterlof its pursuits. They ire mostly inhabited by the ons and daughters of the >low, or their descendants, vho have, but as yesterday, est the cabin and clearing for heir own pleasure or convenience, as the ancient scalp- . if ting warrior of the Iroquois occasionally abandons his wigvam and his wampum for the more attractive surroundings of the Palmer. “Your own city, the crowned and 3CEPTERED MIBTRES4 OF THE LAKES, he urban miracle of the cenury, has been within the last > lecade rated as the first priaary wheat mart of the globe. Siga, Odessa may approach it. shall this, your ascendency, .>e maintained? Asjan Ameri--1 an, I predict, I prefer that the ‘ hies depository of the great ereal shall continue to be upin the shores of Lake Michi:an, rather than those of the laltic or the Euxine? Yet f orign dealers have bought broad since the latter harvsts more wheat than before, iut not here. Neither have * hey gone, they have been ■ .riven hence by that embargo upon commerce, that interdict £ trade induced by our policy ‘■f prohibitory exclusion, "hey still purchase here, not . hen they might, but only of lecessity, when they must. — People will buy their grain There they may sell their oods, at least, where they ave a chance of selling them. . he consequence is we are exiting gold, ill spared, to pay alances, which would have een paid otherwise, or rather ; voula never have had any ex»lence, if we had had a normal demand, full market, and air price for the surplus proucts of American husbandry, -nd this policy of prohibitory e xclusion has been made ope ntive not from the effects of • impetition, unfelt for a quar--lor of a century, but merely ■om the fear thereof. What American, either in art, trade ■H arms, ever justly took counel of his fears? The advo «• ites of this policy speak of it i the light of a discovery, as >i: some new and grand device ;< ;culiarly adapted to the cii- • imstances of the young and j rowing Commonwealth in the amily of Nations. We are ummoned to recommence his>ry in the order of reversal* ins civilization which we jemed ripening under the :y of the West must take its ssons ©t political economy om the obsolete and odious iperstitions of China and .pan. Commercial exclusion id non-intercourse are the pes of NATIONAL DOTAGE id non-age, not of healthy owth or maturity. This contion of affairs can not be irmanent. I trust that we ay indulge the hope that in •urse of time even Massachutts and Rhode Island may *e of their condition of Asia- ; pupilage—may altogether scard the habits and opinas of the mandarin and the icado. One thing is ( ertain, will be discovered after a lile that that imperial grain, i 3 pearl of the harvest, has a . ire stealthy foe than the fly, j rust, or the weevil. It will • found that a large line of ohibitory duties means, not ' dy for American wheat, but r every other American proct ai d fabric, an inferior

demand, a secondary market, and the lowest prices. I make little doubt of the ultimate triumph of the interest of American agriculture. It will survive the spleen of Bismarck, the rivalry of foreign produc tion, and it will not succumb to the more secret and deadly hostility of its domestic enemies. What the genius of American agriculture needs for the products of her hardy sons is a facile, untrammoled roadway to the seaboard, thence into the open market of the world, and her march to the sea will be as irresistible in its progress, and as beneficent in its results, as the advance of that armed host which followed the brave, captor of Savannah through Georgia to the coast. “The party of the people must foster and cherish the business of the people. Wo’d you protect American labor or the American laborers, you will find them on the farm. WOtJLD YOU PROTECT 'AMERICAN CAPITAL ?

You will find its largest, safest and most permahent investment in lands. The amount and value of labor and capital invested in any other industrial pursuit compares with that invested in the tillage of the soil as one of Jupiter’s moons with the masses of the full-orbed planet. The proportion is the samfe, the relation is the same. All the great lines of industrial enterprise are the satellites of agriculture. Her children are attendants, they shine and glow in the light of the mighty mother; they decay in her eclipse. Was it ever before heard that a Nation best trod the way of thrift and increase by a deliberate prolonged depression of the leading industrial interests of its own people? On what page of history since the invention of the daybook and ledger is written an account of the time iq which agriculture highly flourished and manufacture and commerce declined? Ton American farmer has asked lias received very little 1< -islative aid or recognition. 7 e legislative protection aft led to the producer, the dm s upon rice, sugar and wo< . have been in their terms reLbonable and lawful, violateve of no constitutional Obligati m within the line of revenue; they have never touched or even approached the line of prohibitory exclusion. »Vill it be pretended that we have among us some recondite wares, some mysterious fabric more deserving of discriminating favor, more necessary to human comfort and happiness than daily food and raiment? There is no conceivable commodity in the whole range of commercial exchanges which can, by any mode of management, yield us returns so large, so constant, so remunerative as a plenary market for our great staples, the prdducts of the field and farm. The philosopher’s stone of the New World is ther plowshare. It will touch and turn into gold that which it touches more rapidly than aught else in onr abundant stores.”