Democratic Sentinel, Volume 9, Number 12, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 April 1885 — Michigan’s Break for Tariff Reform. [ARTICLE]

Michigan’s Break for Tariff Reform.

Chicago Herald: The causes of the recent remarkable political revolution in Michigan are of interest to everybody, and whatever serves to throw light on the subject cannot fail to attract attention. At the last Presidential election the Democrats and Anti-Monopolists acting together polled for Cleveland 189,000 votes, as against 192,000 cast by the Republicans for Blaine. The Prohibitionists polled 18,000 votes, most of them being of Republican antecedents. Thus a state which gave Garfield a plurality of 55,000 in 1880 was barely saved to Blaine in 1884 by a plurality of 3,000, The election this spring was for a Justice of the Supreme Court and a regent of the university.— Judge Thomas M. Cooley, a distinguished member of the court for years, was renominated by the Republicans and the Prohibitionists. The Democrats and Anti-Monopo-lists named Major Morse, an attorney in good standing who had been a soldier. In the platform on which Maj. Morse stood the Cleveland administration was indorsed strong ground was taken in favor of tariff reform and a vigorous declaration wbs made against monopolies of all kinds. According to Mr. Don M. Dickinson, member of the National Democratic Committee for Michigan, the issue was clearly made by the Fusion in favor of indorsing the present administration, rebuking the aggressions of monopoly and declaring in behalf of a reform of the tariff. This being the case the victory gained becomes one of great significance. Judge Cooley certainly must have stood as the representative of some principles which were exceedingly distasteful to the people of Michigan or so eminent a jurist as he could not have been defeated by a man comparatively unknown. The tariff has worked many evils in Michigan, and the tendency of the Supreme Court to array itself on all occasions on the side of corporations has been most marked. — The lumber, salt, iron and copper lords of that state have been as insolent and selfish as they well co’d be. For many years, under various devices calculated to blind the people to their own best interests, these favored bosses have held the state in the palms of their hands. The fact that they have been beaten under the leadership of so good a man as Judge Cooley is suggestive of the popular revulsion against favoritism in legislation, the supremacy of corporate wealth and monopoly privileges of every kind. With a state once so strongly republiean as Michigan leading the way in favor of tariff reform and the abolition of monopolies no one need despair of the refdrm movement. The black slaves were liberated by the war, It is now time io emancipate the white slaves who have been held in bondage by the tariff favored classes ever since that time