Democratic Sentinel, Volume 10, Number 35, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 October 1886 — WORKING THE SHOPS. [ARTICLE]

WORKING THE SHOPS.

The Little Game Which the Republicans of Indiana Are Engaged In. A Manufacturer’s Scathing Reply to the Republican State Central Committee. The Erils Which the “Protective Policy”. Has Entailed Upon the Country Eloquently Discussed. [From the Indianapolis Sentinel.] . 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 <fc Sons, to whom this particular one is addressed, being leading carriage-makers in Crawfordsville: Indianapolis, Sept. 10,1886. Fisher Doherty & Co.: Deab Sib— 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 party 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 must 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 wo 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. Wo can expect no hope 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 resppuse, which wo will promptly acknowledge. Yours truly, J. N. Huston, Chairman.

Mr. Doherty’s Reply. Cbawfobdsville, Ind., Sapt. 13, 1)85. Republican State Central Committee: Gentlemen—Your circular-letter of September 10th is at hand, and in reply 1 beg to inform Jou that you are wholly mistaken in your man. can not be influenced by an appeal to my selfinterest to do and act wrong toward my fellow beings with the prospect of increasing my gains at their expense. The only protection that I desire, 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 shail receive a greater price for his goods than they might bring if competition were not restricted, you 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 places unequal or unjust burdens upon the toiling millions of laborers meets with my utmost detestation and contempt. The “protection” given to manufacturers by your party for the last twentyfive years has created a few very wealthy men, but, on the other hand, what hai been the result with the great mass of laborers? Manufacturing l>eing confined to fewer 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 highways as tramps. The concentration of capital in these “protected establishments" soon drove out all competition, and the great mass of consumers was compelled to pay exhorbitant prices for goods, because protection added its percent, to the cost of production without any healthy competition. Your party has boen 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 in foreign vessels. Your “protection" has diverted capital and laborers from maritime employment, and filled to overflowing all our factories, the products of 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, tor if England, which does the great shipping business of the world, 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 bottoms at prices in competition with India. South America wants our wares ; we want her hides ; but, unless we can get 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 Avres only twenty-three days, while our iittle sails require six months to go from New York to the .lame place. Now, wherein is the beauty of your system of protection to manufacture: s with a vast surplus for masket, without being able to put it on the market for 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 6f your protective Bystem? The farmer and the laborer, ground down to want by your brazon-foced 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 omanations 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 made a step that has not been marked. The sixteenth century was the century of painters ; the seventeenth the century of writers ; the eighteenth the century of philosophers ; and the nineteenth finds all embodied ■iu 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 tbe concentrated essence of new ideas, and tho problem of 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 stay the steady march of progress, but onward and upward was the course of deHtinv. 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 chess-board, because it has filled the measure of its course, and a more expausivo 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 tho war officers were detailed to return fugitive slaves to their masters, but as the war progressed public sentiment gradually changed, ■>«nd the Republican party waß reluctantly compelled to free all the slaves, because the people clamored for it, the progress of the age demanded it, and no sophistry could avert it. "With equal • persistence does your party now oppose a revision of the tariff laws, ko 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 goo Is. But, like the little stone seen by the Prophet, a more liberal policy has commenced to roll through the States, and soon, reluctantly as vou may feel, your loved system of ‘ protection'' will be consigned to the region of fossil forms. Late statistical reports prove that three-fourths of the exports from the United States consist of agricultural products, which have nominally no pro-

taction, nor do they aik any, while one-fourth must be largely protected, which is thereby in. creased in 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 the Senate wnen millions of the public lands were granted to the various railroads. You controlled the Senate when these 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 prohibiting 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 controlled the Senate when the exorbitant rates of transportation on our grain and cattle from the fertile West left no margin to the farmer, and though Representatives fresh from the people asked the passage of the Reagan bill to control railroad freights in such a way that the farmer could save a pittance of his earnings, 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 three-fourths 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 brazenfaced enough to say that it is most important 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 ever 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 any 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 debts, aud 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 declare 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 for a certain amount than at auother 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 weight at one 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 so much money, by the same authority so much silver, or so much copper, or so much nickel, 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 u legal tender from one man to another. Now if Senator Harrison knows that money is what the law declares it to be, and that alone is money, he is acting the part of a demagogue when he says of the Greenbackers they are idiots, because they ask only the constitutional law governing money. If he is ignorant of the law governing money, then his ignorance should bar him from being returned to the Senate. Bui ho is not ignorant. He wants the power to issue money vested in the banks so as to enable them to contract the currency of the country at will, and thus, by controlling the circulation, the farmer’s products are doEreciated, his debts are doubled, laborers ecome paupers, and ruin stalks through the land at midday. With two-thirds of the real estate of Indiana under mortgage to bunkers, 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 a steady contraction of the circulation of monsy while interest and taxes threaten foreclosure, why, I would ask, in the name ofi conscience, should the farmers and laborers of this State be asked to use extra exertions to return Ben Harrison to the Senate? He 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 \ote for the legislators to return him to the Senate, 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 conquer us with the sword; but now, through the manipulations of Elect street and Wall street bankers and the United States Senate, they are in a fair way to subdue us at last. I shall stoer clear of your policy. Respectfully,

FISHER DOHERTY.