Democratic Sentinel, Volume 10, Number 34, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 September 1886 — TO INDIANA REPUBLICANS. [ARTICLE]

TO INDIANA REPUBLICANS.

F?We commend to the attention of Republicans the following extract frum tie report of the Republican Tariff ’Commission recom-

mending a 20 per cent, reduction of duties. It should prove verygood reading for Indiana Republicans at this time: Early in its deliberations the commission became convinced that a substantial reduction of tariff duties is demanded, not by a mere indiscriminate popular clamor, but by the best conservative opinion of the country, including that which has in former times been most strenuous for the preservation of our natioual industrial defences. Such a reduction of the existing tariff the Commission regards not only as a due recognition of the public sentiment and a measure of justice to consumers, but on 3 * conducive to the general industrial p osperity, and which, though it may be temporarily inconvenient, will be ultimately beneficial to the spe ial interest affected by such reduction. No rates of defensive duties, except for the establishment of new industries, which more than equalize the conditions of labor and capital with those of foreign competitors can bo justified, Excessive duties, or those A-bove such standard of equalization, are positively injurious to the interest which they are supposed to benefit. They encourage the investment of capital in manufacturing enterprise by rash and unskilled speculators, to be followed by disaster to the adventureis and their employes, and a plethora of commodities which deranges the operations of skilled and prudent enterprise. Numerous examples of such disasters and derangements occurred during and.shortly after the excessively protective period of the late war, when tariff dubes were enhanced by the rate of foreign exchange and premiums upon gold. Excessive duties generally, or exceptionally high duties in particular classes, discredit our whole national economic system and furnish plausible arguments for its complete subversion. They serve to increase uncertainty on the part of industrial enterprise, whether it shall enlarge or contract its operations, and take from commerce, as well as production, the sense of stability required for extended undertakings. It would seem that the rates of duties under the existing tariff, fixed, for the most part, during the war, under the evident necessity at that time of stimulating to its utmost extent all domestic production, might be adapted, through reduction, to the present condition of peace requiring no such extraordinary stimulus. And in the mechanical and manufacturing industries, especially those which have been long established, if would seem that the improvements in machinery and processes made within the last twenty years, and the high scale of productiveness which has become a characteristic of their establishments, would permit our manufacturers to compete with their foreign rivals under a substantial reduction of existing duties. Entertaining these views, the Commission has sought to present a scheme of tariff duties in which substantial reduction should be the distinguishing feature. The average reduction in rates, including that from the enlargement of the free list an 1 the abolition of the du ties on charges and commissions, at which the Commission has aimed, is not less on the average than 20 per cent., and it is the opinion of the Commission that the reduction will reach 25 per cent.

A happy re-union of the family of Hon. Geo. H. Brown, occurred in Rensselaer on Tuesday last.— There were bresent on tne occasion Mr. Brown and wife, one son and daughter-in-law, eight daughters, six sous-in-law, nineteen grandchildren, and grandmother Welsn aged 91, the mother of Mr. B’s first wife—3B in all. The affair passed off very t'leasantly. May they participate in many more like meetings. A Republican who heard the speech of Mr. Thompson at Mt. Ayr, last Saturday says, in the language of Bro. James “he’s too ornamental and Jtoo exacting.”—' He’s too ornamental in his instructions on the organization of Government, etc., and too exacting in his demand for the sold Republican vote and one-half of the Democratic. He says he won’t vote for a man so arrogant as to demand it, and there are more in the same boat.