Democratic Sentinel, Volume 8, Number 27, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 August 1884 — The Regenerated Remocracy. [ARTICLE]

The Regenerated Remocracy.

'Hu's*' millions go to tlie benefit of our industries as so much protection. Is not that enough? I)o not these millions give them enough protection? Under the present law they have $100,000,000 more than this. That is wrong. Do you know how the tariff works upon labor and poor peo--Ile ? The wealth of the country does not jay the taritl duties. All the wealth of the banks, all corporate wealth entirely i scapes the tariff. Rich men—the millionaires—practically escape the tariff' taxes. The tariff' duties are in the main paid by laboring men and people in moderate circumstances. Why? It is a tax upon goods purchased. A poor man owning v 1,000 worth of property buyssso worth of woolen goods per year. The duties on woolens is 65 per cent, ad valorum. He pays $32 50 duty, which goes to the Govc.nment. The man worth $50,000 pays this duty also when he buys woolen goods, bat be will not buy much more for bis timely tlum the average, poor man. Here the man owning SI,OOO pays tariff taxes to the amount of $32.50, and the man owning $50,000 pays the same. This is true of all imported goods purchased. Now, is it fair f<r the wealthy man to pay no more tariff t.ix for the support of the Governmen than the poor man ? The man owning $50,000 should pay fifty times as much tariff tax as is paid by the man owning SI,OOO, to make him equally bear this tax burden. Corporate and bank wealth i>ay nothing. If this system of taxation is necessary, then the tariff tax should Ire reduced as soon as possible to a revenue basis, and not one cent beyond that for the purpose of protection. As I have said, the revenue basis is about $175,000,000. I say this basis gives ample protection. You sge tins kind of tax does not fall upon—property valuations, and is, therefore, an unjust tax, because it taxes the people unequally; it taxes the poor man—the laboring man as much as the rich man —when the rich man ought to pay more than the poor man to equally bear the burdens of this tax Let us see how it affects the poor man. .Sugar is an article oi daily food to most people. It is used largely by the poor on account of its cheap food properties. The tariff tax on sugar is about 50 per cent. All must say this is entirely too much tax. It could be reduced one-half. Every $3.00 (lie workingman pays for sugar lie gives SI.OO to the Government. This tariff on sugar is added to the price of the domestic article manufactured in Louisiana. You buy sugar and you pay one price for it and l.uow not whether you buy the imported or domestic article. Kotli go into the store aid both are sold for the same price. Every citizen owes the Government a just raid equal tax, but it should be just and <qual. No tax should fall harder on some people than on others. A laboring man ( urns SIO.OO per week. He lias an average family. On Saturday night he buys at the grocery store lor the coming week or pays fur the advance of tlie past week. This unequal and unjust tariff'takesso percent, from him when he pays tor the week’s i onsumption of sugar, and 95 per cent, when he buys rice, and 24 per cent, when be buys soap, and from 36 to 73 per cent, lor his table salt, and 35 per cent, for bis syrup, and 35 per cent for bis matches, and in this proportion on all lie buys at the grocery store. When he buys clothing be pays 35 per cent, on cotton, on woolen 65 percent., on linen 40 per cent. At the end of a year how much of his wages does he give to the protectionist? Protection increases the price of every article protected,

and when that is done the purchasing power of a day’s wages is decreased. It 1 pay SI,OO for 11 pounds of sugar to-day, and hy protection I can only hay 8 pounds next week for a dollar, clearly the purchasing power of my dollar is lessened. This argument applies to everything the laborer buys. Then how does a protective tariff benelit the laboring man? It takes back a part, of his wages all the time. It is his worst, foe in this country. It limits the markets for the product of his labor, and when the products of labor—in the shop or on the farm —do not sell tor want of markets, then labor must suffer. Then production stops and labor stops. Protection refuses tiie world’s markets for the products of our labor. If the home markets are overstocked, then all business ceases until ihe surplus is consumed. During this time labor goes unemployed. Protection depends on home markers alone, and refuses all trade with the world. In order to cut off the world’s trade with us, duties must be highly protective. What is the effect on home production ? The tariff on woolen, cotton, iron and steel goods is so highly pro eefive that the major part of the surplus capital ol the country is engaged in their manufacture, and the result is overproduction of these ssandard goods, and many millions ot money are locked up in the idle stock, and the capital so locked up being withdrawn from active circulation in tin; channels of trade, brings de pression to every kind of business, and laboring men are out of employment. Does this policy benelit labor and the business of the country ? If the tariff law was not so unequal, it would not draw so much capital to certain industries to the exclusion of others. Our present tariff law is an enemy to diversified industry. Why ? Any law offering a premium of Go to 80 per cent, on manufactured woolens, and 25 per cent, on manufactured linen or cotton, will have the effect to draw nearly all the capital and business energies of the country to the support of the industry having the highest premium. This will he so in the face of probable over-production. While the industry is struggling along wiih the small premium, the one with the high premium is abounding with prosperity. Soon the markets are overstocked and the prosperous business ceases, and millions are tied up and can benefit no man and no industry, and nothing but reverses and general depression can follow such a policy. In this day of knowledge every sane man knows what stimulants mean. A protective tariff is a business stimulant. The industry having the highest protection lias the greatest temporary prosperity, but it is only temporary like any stimulant. Protective tariff stimulations do not benefit any country or any people, because stimulations ultimately kill the patient. It creates unnatural prosperity. You know big profits make any business active, and soon other people with a little money want these big profits also, and they will withdraw their money from some oilier business in which it is doing reasonably well, and go into the business paying the immense profit.;. Soon there is more business than buyers to support it. Soon it lias outdone itself, and the country suffers a loss, general business a shock, and the owners are bankrupted. I call this business pyrotechnics—a dazzling flash in the sky that allures the avaricious with money, and for the time being diverts attention from ail other useful industries. Well, reverses come, and who suffers the most by it,? The poor man —the laboring man. A steady business that is partial lo no particular industry, but fair to all, one that raises one hundred and seventy-five millions of revenue for (loveriiiiwni Vuipjxirt, properly adjusted, is the only tariff

that will give a steady business and reasonable profits. Then lalxir will lie regularly employed, as the business interests of the country will get down to a firm basis, and stay there. Then manufacturing will not exceed the consumptive wants of the country, and stagnation in trade cannot result TaU and theorize as you will, hut stagnation in trade and business arises from overstocked markets. The supply is greater than the demand. There never was and never will he business stagnation with open and willing markets. Now, what is the true policy for America? .Shall she seek the open markets of the world, or confine her great business energies to the supply of her people alone? Our national policy must l>e determined by our national conditions. What are these? The mountains and the lands are full of mineral wealth of cheap and easy access. Hard wood timber is good and abundant. The motive power to turn the wheels in most of the States is unlimited. The water ways are ample and convenient. Railroads go eveiywhere, and more of them will be built when their use is demanded. The agricultural lands have no equal in any other country in area and fertility. American skill, life and energy have no counterpart upon the globe. American capital and good and willing labor is abundant. These are the American conditions fairly stated. Now with all these favorable conditions should the great products of America, coming from inexhaustible mines and fertile soil, shaped and moulded by American skill, capital and labor, be limited to the home markets for sale? Is that our policy? Our capacity exceeds the home wants. Shall we limit production? Shall we limit and cramp American labor? Shall we give it only half employment ? Shall we cramp American energy, genius and capital? Or shall we not go into the open markers of the world for the sale of our products? Millions and tens of millions of people in other countries want our bread and meat, our woolen and cotton fabrics, and onr machinery of all kinds. The world’s markets are ready to take our great surplus productions. Witli our great conditions we should count onr foreign trade by billions. To-day, with all our great end unequalled conditions and resources, we sell in foreign markets but sixty millions of manufactured goods! The sale in the world’s markets of the products of only one industry —agriculture—is more than twelve times the products of the manufacturing industries. If the world’s markets are sought and encouraged for American pork, why not for American iron and steel goods? If the foreign markets are sought and encouraged for American wheat and beef, why not for American cotton and woolen fabrics? Little England—a small territory—with none of the great natural advantages of America, manufactures and sells in the open markets of the world over fifteen hundred millions of dollars annually to our sixty millions. This small island, importing her raw materials, sells more to (lie world than the whole American continent with an abundance of raw materials at home and in sight. The protective system says no, to the world’s trade and commerce. It is an embargo to all foreign shipment lo the American ports. The tariff duties are so high that the world’s products will only come in limited quantities. The tariff' practically closes our door to the trade of other countries. Then other countries will not trade with us. There can he no commerce without reciprocity. There can be no international trade Without mutuality. We cannot forbid the wo Id’s trade with us by a high tariff, and then ask the world to take our products. With the world’s markets practically closed, home productions rise above home consumption, and it must continue to be so, tor our conditions are so favorable to unlimited productions. Docs the farmer, the laborer and the mechanic, want this exclusive policy? The farmer must depend on the foreign markets to take Ins wheat, beef and pork. The home markets cannot consume theta. Over six hundred millions of farm products are sold abroad annually. This outlet for the farmer’s surplus is threatened by our protective system. England, our greatest market for breadstuff's and meats is looking to India and South America tor her wheat. She purchased forty million bushels from India last year, against seventy millions from America. Other countries will do the same tiling, for they will not trade with us when we refuse to trade with them.

The Republican party in Congress voted to keep the high tariff tax on woolens and cotton, on salt and on lumber. It was willing to take the tax off ot whiskey and tobacco,but keeps it on salt, lumber and daily clothing. I never will consent to take the tax off’of whiskey and tobacco until tlie tax is reduced on the necessaries of-life. I deny the right of this Government to tax me to protect my neighbor or anyone else. I deny the power of this Government to tax me for tribute to any industry. I deny the power ot my Government to collect one cent from me over the actual expenses of the Government. If the right to tax the people for protection of a few exists, then it is a general, and not a special right. Every man has the same right to protection, and how absurd the doctrine becomes when it is followed out. If all were protected, each being taxed for the protection of the other, then there are no benefits and the doctrine amounts to nothing. They want protective duties to pay wages to laboring men. That is the cry of Satan to lure the victim. The average tariff is about 42 per cent. Tlie average cost of labor is less than 20 per cent, of the manufactured article. The tariff could he reduced over 20 per cent., and then they would have their labor free. Now they have 20 per cent, over all cost of their labor. It is robbery. Cleveland and Hendricks are able, true and earnest reformers. Both scorn corruption in the public service. Cleveland drove it out of Buffalo by his strong administration. He lias driven bad men from his presence as Governor of New York. He has no bad record. \Ve all know Hendricks. The name is a hear word in the Democratic household. The man is dear to us as kindred. Shall Hendricks lose Indiana to the ticket ? No. The people must have more pride for Indiana than to allow defeat to her own able statesman. The pride and honor of Indiana is in the balance, and it must not go down. Many people want Blaine for President for the reason he will declare war against England. A foreign war would be very disastrous to America. It would sweep the remainder of our commerce from the sea. It would wipe out custom revenues, and the people would he direetly taxed to support the Government. The $175,000,000 of revenue collected fiom custom duties would he collected directly from the people in case we had a foreign war, and the farmers’ market for farm products would be entirely destroyed. This House passed a bill to limit the jurisdiction of federal courts, and passed my bill, after amendment, preventing the driven well frauds. They now sleep in the .Senate of the United Stales. Time will tell what that body will do with them.

Fellow-citizens, I again thank you for the honor conferred upon me a second time. I promise you entire devotion to your interest and welfare. In all my life I never asked for any nomination to any office, excepting the first time I was a candidate for Prosecuting Attorney. In all the offices I have been called upon to fill, I have done my whole du y and to the satisfaction of the people. Now 1 sincerely thank you for your patient attention.

The Buffalo Express, which supports Blaine, says : “Thereare tew good men in Buffalo who will not he glad to take Grover Cleveland by the hand and congratulate him on his distinguished and well-won honor. Well won, we say, for, whatever others may have done in his behalf, he has himself rendered honorable and eminent | public service, and has deserved all that a ! man may deserve of his party by doing I with all his might, and for the most part ! unselfishly and with conscientious integ- , rity, the work to which he has been called. I The people of Buffalo have known Mr. Cleveland as one of their worthiest citizens, ore of their manliest men ; faithful to his clients, faithful to his friends, faithful to every public trust. If he were not a candidate for office, his fellow-townsmen, almost without exception, would not hesitate to say this of him. But, although he is a candidate, and a candidate whom we shall strive with all our might honestly to defeat, truth and justice remaining the same, why should the Express, hesitate to say it now.” This is manly. The Boston Post: “Grover Cleveland is careful, painstaking, scrupulous, and unyielding when he is convinced that his position is right, He is a reformer by practice and natural tendency. He is quick to discern what is improper in public affairs and energetic in applying a remedy. His public record shows that he is brave, honorable, manly, and just. His talent is of the kind that lias been most useful in the world. I; lies largely in the habit of patient investigation and close application. He will make a working President. He will possess a more intimate personal knowledge of the details of liis administration than has been the case with most Presidents. Of liis availability we haven’t Hie shadow of a doubt, Kelly and Butler to the contrary notwithstanding.” Harper’s Weekly: “The nomination of Grover Cleveland defines sharply the actual issue of the presidential election of this year. He is a man whose absolute official integrity has never been questioned, who has no laborious and doubtful explanations to undertake, and wiiois universally known its the Governor of New York, elected by an unprecedented majority which wits not partisan and represented both the votes and the consent of an enormous body of Republicans, and who, as the chief executive of tlie State, has steadily withstood the blandishments and the threats of the worst elements of his party, and has justly earned the reputation of a courageous, independent, and efficient friend and promoter of administrative reform. His name has become that ot the especial representative among our public men of the integrity, purity, and economy of administration which arc the objects of the most intelligent and patriotic citizens. The hitter and furious hostility of Tammany Democracy and of Butler to Cleveland is his passport to the confidence of good men, and the general conviction that Tammany will do all that it can to defeat him will he an additional incentive to the voters who can not support Blaine, and who are unwilling not to vote at all, to secure the election of a candidate whom the political rings and the party traders instinctively hate and unitedly oppose.” Judge Bissell, of Buffalo: “Grover Cleveland is very popular with the Germans in Buffalo, who number nearly half the 200,000 people here. They like him because they believe he keeps tlie taxes down. He has enemies in Buffalo whose schemes he opposed Since he was Governor it has been attempted to put the fire department into Democratic hands, and they expected to steal pretty much all the appropriations. Cleveland has got the tire department into the hands of a commission with small salaries, and it is run for only 60 per cent, of what the same service costs elsewhere, and is the best fire d partment in the country. The message he wrote as Mayor, vetoing an aldermanic hill, made Him enemies. Some ot them are still sprightly. There were fifteen men here who designed to get hold of the appropriations, raise them, and steal them. Mr. Cleveland sat down on them. He is perfectly brave, indifferent whether his party is hurt or helped.” That accounts for Kelly’s hostility to him.

Parson John P. Newman, of New York City, better known as General Grant’s pastor, was recently asked, “How do you regard the nomination of Grover Cleveland?” He replied, ‘‘As the very best the Democratic party could have done. Personally I am in favor of Blaine and Logan, but as a citizen of New York I feel under great obligations to Mr. Cleveland for his public-spirited course as Governor. I regard him as a representative American citizen. He is a grand type of the young manhood of our country.” “What do you know of the so-called feeling against him by the labor element of New York?” was asked. “All nonsense,” he replied. “Why it is absurd to say that Cleveland would antagonize the element he sprung from Like Lincoln, Grant, and Blaine, Grover. Cleveland has worked himself up from the ranks, and he deserves all of his success.” Parson Newman doesn’t believe in a campaign of personal detraction. Ex-Senator Kernan, of New York, says : “We had to nominate a man who could carry New York State, and Mr. Cleveland,

in my mind, is the only man who can do it. His record, though a brief one, is one that we of New York State are proud of. He has been the Governor of the Empire State, not of any section or body of men. but of all and for all. The charge has been presented against him by certain parties, that as Governor he has opposed the Catholics aiul their church. Does the record support this? No, sir! in no way. In fact, they might have charged just the opposite, for, as is well known, he appointed three Catholics to the three highest salaried offices in the gift of the Governor, one of which was the Superintendent of Public Works, a most important office, the other the Superintendent of the State Insurance Department and President of the Railroad Commission. Does this look like holding the Catholics back ? Have not the papers published long interviews with the most prominent members of the Catholic clergy and laity, who stated in plainest terms that they never knew of Governor Cleveland doing an unfair act toward the Catholic Church or its members? Again, we have the confidence of the business community. They believe in Cleveland, and they will vote for him. Of my own knowledge, there are men who have not taken any interest in politics for years, who are so well pleased with the course pursued by Mr. Cleveland, that they will support him earnestly at the polls. Cleveland may lose tlie Tammany vote, but, where he loses one vote there, he will, in my opinion, gain two, if not three, from other sources. I have looked at this matter fairly, and am assured of the Democratic party at the polls next November.”