Democratic Sentinel, Volume 8, Number 18, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 May 1884 — MAC VEAGH ON ARTHUR. [ARTICLE]

MAC VEAGH ON ARTHUR.

Heapin' the Fruits of Republicanism. Eleven years ago (1873) the coon try experienced a business panic, in consequence of Republican rule, of fearful sweep and destruction. That panic Tiad its origin in the policy and practices of the Republican party, and from •“Black Friday* until an overruling Providence, by a succession of abundant harvests, enabled the people to •overcome unparalleled disasters, the country suffered under a cloud of indescribable gloom. From 1873 to 1878 -there were 41,195 failures, involving a loss of $1,200,967,132, as follows: Failures. Liabilities. 1873 8,133 $228,499,000 1874 6,830 155,239,000 1875 7,740 2-.1.060.000 1878 9,092 191,117,000 1877 8,872 190,699,000 1878 10,478 234.383,132 Total 47,196 $1,200,967,132 It has passed into history that the panio which came upon the country in 1873, with earthquake violence and results, was directly traceable to Republican freebooting practices, in whioh the Government was directly involved. It is known that Gen. Grant was implicated in the black Friday panio, and now the Wall street alarm which is spreading throughout the country begins with the collapse of the Grant & Ward bucket-shop, referred to as the '“monumental failure of the age." “There was,” says the Philadelphia Times, “the proverbial Grant incapacity to see that the Grant reputation was being used in a private oapacity to victimize both the Grant family and the financial public, just as it was used by the Babcocks and public robbers of former days, when the senior Grant -occupied the highest publio position in the gift of the American people. * * Let the affairs of the rotten concern be thoroughly probed, and if investigation shows that Mr. Ward had confederates in the brilliant scheme of borrowing millions and paying nothing, let them be investigated by an officer with a warrant, too. Justice should not be stupefied and struck dumb by the magnitude of this piece of rascality. It is time for a vigorous application of its iron hand.” Grant may answer as a figurehead, but the

true cause of the disasters that have -already come, and which are filling the public mind with alarm, are traceable directly to Republican policy ariff practices. John S. Moore, in a recent communication to the New York Times, says: “If this protection policy is absolutely necessary to insure prosperity, why, in the name of common sense, is the country suffering ? Why are strikes rampant? Why are people starving? Why had hundred? of people in the 'very holy land of protection—in Rhode Island—the other day to be relieved from starvation a fact which Mr. Hunt had read from the Clerk’s desk in the House of Representatives? Why are the most gigantic failures ever known in the eountry pressing upon the people daily in all parts of the United States? Where is the prosperity that is vaunted in behalf of this tariff robbery? Monopoly has for a time covered the festering sore, and believes that it is cured. Not all the waters of the sea can wash this shameful, leprous spot clean.” It will be remembenpd that, only a day or two before the crash came and his bucketshop burst, Gen. Grant told an interviewer that the business outlook was most delightful, and that therefore the prospects of the Republican party couid scarcely be improved, crediting by implication the prosperity of the country and the satisfactory condition of business to the Republican party. At the time Geu. Grant was giving utterance to these rosy reflections, his bucket-shop concern was in the last throes of crime-stained and crime-cursed dissolution—so shameful in all its degrading methods that a demand is made for the arrest of all parties connected with it. Manifestly, if the Morrison bill had passed, relieving the country of $30,0u0,000 unjust taxation, the miserable monopoly organs would have howled themselves hoarse charging that a Democratic Congress had demoralized business and inaugurated a panic. That sort of a solution of the problem being denied them they are compelled to sit dumb, while from the center to the circumference of the republic comes the people’s den"nciations of the crushing burse of protection, under the influence of which the American flag disappears from all foreign ports, and the carrying trade of the world is transferred to European maritime nations. Under the influences of the Republican protective tariff the markets of the world are closed to our manufactured articles, and are being closed to our agricultural products. Under the curse of the Republican high protective tariff, overproduction gluts the home markets; workingmen are deprived of employment or have to submit to starvation prices and face destitution. Under a Republican liigli protective tariff, now, as in 1873, a panic i 3 inaugurated, demanding the interference of the Secretary of the Federal

Treasury to save the country from multiplied disasters; but the panic may, in spite of all efforts to the contrary, sweep like a cyclone over the land. Aside from the ooudition of affairs in New York, it is doubtful, except under the influences of a panic, if business affairs were ever in a more unsatisfactory condition. The farmer finds his products declining. The man who has invested in stocks finds his investments shrinking in value. Manufacturers are required to see their warehouses full of products they can not dispose of and their machinery silent and still. Laborers are confronted with idleness and are subjected to a ruinous decline in wages. Strikes multiply, and the immediate future forces upon all flunking mei\ gloomy forebodings. This state of things has been brought about by the curse of Republicanism. The policy of the party has been corrupting to an extent that defies exaggeration. It has been a peculating, robbing policy. It has built up monopolies and compelled the people to pay them enormous tribute, and Republicans and their organs have claimed that their nefarious course has been in the interest of labor and the security of business; but now the conntry is required to behold the spectacle of business demoralized and laborers farced to bear the torture of idleness or live like beggars. Such is the

outcome of Republican supremacy. No wonder the verdict of the people is: "The Republican party must go."—lndianapolis Sentinel.

A Scathing Review of Chet Arthur’» Career bjr Garfield's Attorney-General. An open letter from ex-Attomey-General MaoVeagh to ex-Secretary Bristow on Arthur as a .Presidential candidate has been published. It opens thus: I notice that you are announced to address a meeting to morrow night in Mew Yo k in support of the proposition that the political career of Cheater A. Arthur makes his elevation to tho Presidency by the votes of hit fellow-citizens more desirable than that, for instance, of tienitor l .dm ;nds, or Senator Sherman, or any other of ohr eminent public men whose names are fre juentiy used in connection with that great otfioe. As you extorted my admiration and support and Mr. Arthur's contemptuous hostdity eight years ago by your efforts to bring the guilty in high plaoos to punishment, I am sorry to dnd myseif diuerlng so radically from you as to the present duty of men who care for a higher and purer public life. But mv warm personal regard for you makes me desirous that your speech should be a speech, even in a bad cause. I venture, therefore, to offei you a few suggestions. At the threshold, I ought to warn you that while nobody envies Mr. Arthur’s great prize, as far berond his expectations as his deserts, which he drew “in the lottery of assassination," yet nobody has forgotten the pregnant fact that Guiteau was the original Arthur man; that he killed President Gartield expressly to make Mr. Arthur President, and that he did make him President by that act for nearly four years. Now, in view of this awful tragedy and its it has always seemed to a good many people, outside of Wall street, of course, that a proper sense of decency and of the fltneßS of things would have led President Arthur and his friends tp see that his true course was to be satisfied with the ono term thus secured to him, and not to challenge his countrymen to review his political career, and to express their opinion of it. As. however, you propose to hold up that career as worthy of especial honor, and even of the highest office in the gift of the people, in preference, for example, to the po liticai oareor of Senator Edmunds or Senator Sherman, I will gladly help you to a few points In the line of your argument. MacVeagh then cites the building up and managing of the Republican “machine” of the city of New York, alludes to the noble attitude Mr. Arthur maint tined toward the civil-service orders of President Hayes defying both the President and the Secretary of the Treasury, and refuses either to obey their orders or resign his offioe; to the third term; to the speech at the Dorsey banquet, “the first and last occasion in our history when one man publicly praised another for bribing voters*’; to Mr. Arthur’s part in the resignations of Mr. Conkling and Mr. Platt, and his “conduct at Albany until sumoned to Washington by the sound of Guitean’s pistol”; to the “mad riot of calumny and defamation of the dead Garfield, in which for many months the most intimate friends and associates of Mr. Arthur indulged. ” The remainder of the points are in the same line.