Democratic Sentinel, Volume 10, Number 33, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 September 1886 — WORKING THE SHOPS. [ARTICLE]

WORKING THE SHOPS.

A Li .• « L.L REPUBLICAN GAME ‘ Protecting’’ Senator Harrison -Manufacturer Dohert y’s Sharp Reply to the Republican State Central Committee. The following is a copy of a circular now being sent to all manufacturing firms in the State by the Republican State Central Committee, F. Doherty & Sons, to whom this particular one is addressed being leading carriage makers in Crawfordsville: Indianapolis, Sept. 10.1886. Fisher Doherty & Co.: Dear Sir— Your institution, so favorably known, must certainly feel a deep interest in the principle of protection to American manufacturers being sustained. The marvelous growth of this country for the twenty-five years of Republican supremacy evidences the wisdom of our party tenets. The Democratic p irty believes in free trade, and will, if given control of both Houses of Congress, certainly inflict this calamity upon us. It is most important that we should retain control of the Senate, and hence the great interest that centers in the effort to control our next General Assembly. We m ust do our utmost if Senator Harrison is to be his own successor. A decisive victory in Indiana, this year, presages National success in 1888. To effect a change in the National Administration, it is almost absolutely essential to carry Indiana, and if we do not carry it this year we can hope for little in 1888. We must provide reading matter for the people, pay expenses of speakers, distribute documents, get absent voters home, awaken an interest in our behalf, and get out a full vote, to do which requires in the aggregate considerable money. AV e can expect no help from abroad, but must rely upon ourselves. Our organization is such that it should be a guarantee to all that all moneys received will be wisely used. Evidence your interest.in and fealty to the cause by an immediate response, which we will promptly acknowledge. Yours truly, J. N. Huston, Chairman.

Mr. Doherty’s Reply. Crawfordsville, Ind., I Sept. 13, 1886. | Republican State Central Committee: Gentlemen—Your circular-let-ter of September 10 is at hand, and in reply I beg to inform you that you are wholly mistaken in your man. I can not be influenced by an appeal to my self-interest to do and act wrong toward my fellow beings with the prospect of increasing my gains at their expense. The only protection that I desir , or that any manufacturer should desire in a country where competition should be free to all, is that my goods merit the patronage of the consumer. Whenever you declare by law that one manufacturer shall receive a greater price for his goods than they might bring if competition were not restricted, vou place a burden on the great laboring mass of consumers Hence, ‘protection’ is simply another term for enriching the few by legally stealing from the many. My sympathies have always been with the oppressed, and every practice and every law that daces unequal or unjust burdens Upon the toiling millions of laborers meets with my utmost detestation and contempt. She “protection” given to manufacturers by vour party for the last twenty-five years has created a few

ver- wealthy men, but, on the other hand, what has been the result with the groat mass of laborers? M: n ufactueing being confined to fewei establishments rendered the competition of labor too great, and thus the price of labor was reduced far below living wages, and the importation of foreign pauper labor, at still reduced rates, drove millions of laborers onto the hi :h ways as tramps. The concentration ot capital in these “protected establishments ’ soon drove out all competition, and the great mass of consumers was compelled to pay exorbitant prices for goods, because “protection” added its per cent, to the cost of production without any healthy competition. Your party has been zealous to protect manufacturers against the introduction of foreign pauper made goods, while it has steadily refused to protect American labor against the importation of foreign pauper laborers. Your party‘has been so. zealous in protecting the manufacturer against foreign imports, that all our maritime commerce has ceased to exist, and our agricultural and manufactured articles have to be shipped inforeign vessel . Your “protection” has diverted capital and laborers from maritime employment, and filled to overflowing all our factories, the products f which must find a market if other nations can not supply the demand and are disposed to do our carrying. The same is the result of your system in the agricultural products of our country, for if England, which does the great shipping business of the ’ word, can sell her goods in India or Australia, she sends-them there and returns with wheat or cattle product, and ours must remain at home or be shipped in their bottom at prices in competition with India. South America wants our wares, we want her hides; but, unless we can got a British vessel to do our carrying, we have only to wait, as a direct result of your “protective” system. It takes a British steamer to go from London to Buenos Ayres only twenty-three days, while our little sails require six months to go from New York to the same place. Now, wherein is the beauty of your system of protection to manufacturers with a vast surplus for market; without being able to put it on the market far want of the means of transportation ? Have the British been your secret partners in this game, or is it chance, for the purpose of demonstrating the fallacy of your protective system? The farmer and the laborer, ground down to want by your brazen-faced fallacy of “protection” look with eager eyes on anything that may give relief from the misery you are inflicting. “The marvelous growth of the country as an evidence of Republican wisdom.and statesmanship!” lam surprised that you do not include the sunlight and’ the air as emanations from the wisdom of your party tenets. The marvelous growth of the country is simply the natural result of the development and progress of the age. Victor Hugo says, “that for 400 years the human race has not male a step that has not been marked. The sixteenth century was the century of pointers; the seventeenth the century of writers; the eighteenth the century of philosophers, and the nineteenth fin s all embodied in one grand struggle for. development” The political question was shaken when feudalism grounded its arms: when the Mayflower sailed for the New World she was freighted with the concentrated essence of new ideas, and the problem jf a free government, where man should be his. own sovereign master, was solved when Cornwallis surrendered his sword to Washington, and no pent up policy could slay the steady march of progress, but onwardi and upward was the course of destiny. Slavery in half the States, had to crumble to make way for progress. Your boasted Republican wisdom seems doomed to be rubbed from the political trestleboard, because it has filled the

measure of its cousse, and a more expansive policy must be instituted to meet the demand of the age. When your party was first organized it most zealously opposed the abolition of slavery, and early in the war officers were detailed to return fugitive slaves to their masters, but as the war progressed public sentiment gradually changed, and the Republican party was reluctantly compelled to free all the slaves, because the people clamored for it, the progress of the age demanded it, and no sophistry could a ert it. With equal persistence does your party now oppose a revision of the tariff laws, so as to make them move in conformity with the arts and sciences; with the education and intelligence of the people; with the rapid transit of news and transportation of goods. But, like the little stone seen by the Prophet, a more liberal policy has commenced to roll thro’ the States, and soon, reluctantly as as you may feel, your loved system of “protection” will be consigned to the region of fossil forms. Late statistical reports prove that threefourths of all the exports from the United States consist of agricultural products, which have nominally no protection, nor do they ask any, wh le one-fourth must be largely protected, which is thereby increased m cost to the purchaser, for the purpose of upholding a system which makes it too much of a luxury for the laborer. You say it is most important that the Republican party should retain control of the United States Senate. To an unbiased mind the question arises, why? You controlled tiie Senate when millions of the public lands were granted to the various railroads. You controlled the Senate when lands were declared forfeited by the people’s Representatives, and yet you refused to accede to the will of the people. You controlled the Senate when the people, through their Representatives demanded a law prohibit ng foreigners from holding large bodies of land and converting our place for homes into European cattle ranches, and you failed to hear the cries of the people. You control ed the Senate when the exorbitant rate of transportation on our grain and.cattle from the fertile West l°ft no margin to the farmer, and through Representatives fresh from the people asked the passage of the Reagan bill to control railroad freights in such a w y that the farmer could save a pittance from his earnings, and yet you refused their appeals. You controlled the Senate when the House bill to apply the surplus revenue to the purchase of the interest-bearing bonds had passed the House by more than a threefourths majority, and it was presented to you for approval, and by your manipulation of it you made it inoperative, and in the interest of Wall street brokers, and yet you are brazen-taced enough to say that it is most impoatant that you retain control of the Senate.

You say you must use extra exertion to retain Senator Harrison for next term. What has Senator Harrison eve-’ done to engraft him so firmly in the affections of the farmers and laboring men of Indiana? What great statesmanlike step has he ever taken to grapple with the financial or anv other problem of the age ? I know of but one step, and this was when he declared the Greenback party fanatics and idiots. Their fanaticism and idiocy consisted in demanding that Congress exercise its constitutional right to coin all substances used as money, making them a full legal tender for all debt«, and keeping the amount in circulation equal to the demands of commerce. He called them idiots; they knew him to be a fossil, either unable to comprehend what It takes to constitute money, or knowing he lacks the moral honesty and courage to d - clare his convictions, If money consists of gold alone, from an innate principle inherent within it, why does it fluctuate so that at one time it requires more weight fo.' a certain amount than at another time, and hence this gold is money by its innate principle, or it is money by virtue of the law of Congress. Now, if it is money by its inherent nature, why does it require more weigat atone time than at another? Or, if it is money by act of Congress, wherein does it differ from any other thing that Congress declares to be money ? If the law makes even gold of

a certain weight to be called s° much money, by the same authority so much silver, or so much copper, or so much nickle, or a certain marked piece of paper, can be declared to be so much money, for money only consists of that substance which the law declares shall be called money, and be a legal tender from one man to another Now if Senator Harrison knows that money is what the law 7 declares it to be, and that alone is mon y, he is acting the part of a demagogue when he says of the Greenbackers, they are idiots because they ask only ihe constitutional law governing money. If he is ignorant of the law governing money, then his ig orance should bar him from being returned to the Senate. But he is not ignorant. He wants the power to issue money vested in the banks so as to enable them to contract the currency of ihe country at will, and thus, by controlling the circulation, the farmers’ products are depreciated, his debts are doubled, laborers become paupers and ruin stalks through the land at midday. With two-thirds of the real estate of Indiana under mortgage to bankers, insurance companies and foreign capitalists: with railroad freights eating up the grain and other products of our farms to transport them to the seaboard; with steady contraction of the circulation of money while interest and taxes threaten foreclosure; why, I would ask, in the name of conscience, should the farmers and laborers of this State be asked to use extra exertions to return Ben Harrison to the Senate? H e certainly has not one sentiment, one interest in common with the agricultural and laboring classes of ; this State, and when these classes go to the polls and vote for th - Legislators to return him to theS.nate, they are tightening the fetters about their limbs that your party has been forging for them for the last twenty-five years. The aristocracy of Europe declared at the close of the rebellion “that it was well to abolish slavery, for slavery carries with it the cares of slavery; but by controlling the money of the country they could control the labor of the country.”— Twice they failed to c mquer us with the sword; but now through the manipulations of Fleet street and Wall street bankers and the United States Senate, they are in a fair way to subdue us at last. I shall steer clear of your policy. Respectfully,

FISHER DOHERTY.