Democratic Sentinel, Volume 11, Number 10, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 April 1887 — HURD TALKS FREE TRADE. [ARTICLE]

HURD TALKS FREE TRADE.

Absolutely Certain That It Will Eventually Overcome All Opposition. [Baltimore special.] Frank Hurd, the energetic free-trade Bepresentative from Ohio, lectured tonight, by special invitation, before the Crescent Club, the leading Democratic political organization of Baltimore. A delegation from the Federation of Labor was present. “What do you hope to accomplish, Mr. Hurd,” he was asked after the lecture, “by continuing this agitation of the free-trade question?” , “Hope! I have got beyond hope. lam absolutely certain that we shall succeed. Just wait and see. This country is waking to the iniquity of the tariff oppression, which was designed simply for the purpose of transferring their hard-earned dollars from the pockets of the people to the safes of the millionaire mill-owners of New England and the iron aristocracy bf Pennsylvania. The great trouble is that we have a mighty power of money to fight, and that the agents of the plutocrats are ever and busily engaged in the process of hoodwinking the people. Every feeling of patriotism has been appealed to, and thousands have been actually kept away from even listening to us because they were made to think that we nre the agents of the English Government and tho enemies of American labor. Agents of fiddlesticks! Why, if America were to adopt free trade to-morrow it would be a most staggering blow to England’s supremacy in commerce. But lies are not eternal. They may work for awhile, but presently truth will slay them all. A country only cripples itself by adopting the bonds of protection. Why, if this great, free and growing nation were to cast off these timid restrictions upon the development of our industries we could swiftly drive England and the other European nations from every profitable market in the world and from every profitable line of industry and commerce. Wo could literally make them hew’ers of wood and drawers of water for the United States.” “How comes it, then, Mr. Hurd, that you were defeated in the last election, if, as you say, your cause is making progress?” “Oh, that doesn’t amount to anything. Why, don’t you know that lam used to that sort of thing? For the last five terms it has been up and down in the same way. 1 am elected for one term and defeated for the next, but the following term I go back again. The reason is that when lam on the ground in Ohio lam able to fight my battle before the people. When Igo to Congress 1 try to do my duty there with all my might, and I devote my whole time to working for a reduction of the tariff. Then it is tnat the enemies of the cause have their chance. They work behind my back, and I wake up at the end of the term to find myself defeated. You see this is a close battle all along tho line, and when an opportunity offers the protectionist agents are busily at work in every doubtful constituency represented by "a free trader. They work with any or all parties, trading votes in order to accomplish tho one end they have in view—the maintenance of the high, tariff. They care very 'little whether a man is a Democrat or a Bepublican, though the Bepublican party is responsible for the imposition of a high tariff, while the Democratic party’s declared principles are against it. ” “ But don’t the free traders, although mostly Democrats, and although they declare that free trade is really a Democratic principle, sometimes accept the aid of Bepublican votes?” “Certainly. Any one is welcome to vote as he pleases on men and measures. But we don’t trade. That is what our opponents do, and that has been the means used to defeat me as well as others. But I will be back again, never fear. I am working like a Trojan, and stirring up the people of Ohio right along. Look at the difference. When I began working fourteen years or so ago I could get no one to hear me speak. People out in Ohio seemed to think I was mad, or at least a crank. A handful of the elect would gather to listen to my talk, and the newspapers would report nothing next morning--perhaps have a sneer at me or the cause. But I went right along in my course. More and more began to listen. I ran for Congress and was defeated. I ran again, and—excuse my blushes —was elected. Ever since it has been up and down, as I have described it. But look at the difference now! I can hardly find time to lecture at all the places to which I am asked. I say this because it is not personal; it is the people’s interest in the freetrade cause.”

The Bulldozed. In his admirable speech at Philadelphia Governor Hill touched a very weak 1 oint in the Republican argument. During the progress of the Maine Pilgrim through Pennsylvania his heart has bled continually, bleeding for the supposed wrongs, outrages, and crimes against the suffrages which are perpetrated, according to the Republicans, in the Southern States, and for which no other evidence is sought or admitted than the fact that those States are not Republican. Brother Blaine’s argument is substantially this: 1. There are negroes in the. Southern States. 2. These States ought to be Republican. 3. Consequently the negroes are bulldozed. This is . not logical, but it is funny. Governor Hill pertinently inquires why Mr. Blaine did not stop in Rhode Island on his way to Pennsylvania and ask his friends there “why they do not strike from the laws and constitution of that little, narrow, bigoted Republican State the requirement that before a foreign-born citizen can vota he must have a property qualification.” But these facts do not cause the Republicans the slightest perturbation, nor do they even feel that there is any inconsistency in the Republican position. In a Republican State they think that discrimination against foreigners is all right. As long as bulldozing increases the Republican vote in the North it is a high, laudable, and holy procedure, which allows “the better element” to assert its superiority. And as long as the Republicans remain in a minority is the South, so long will the assumption that there is bulldozing there be an article of faith among Republicans in the North. —New York Sun. |