Democratic Sentinel, Volume 11, Number 47, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 December 1887 — Page 3

BLAINE’S INTERVIEW.

A Republican Newspaper on the Maine Man’s Sid lor the Nomination. A Campaign Conducted on “Slippery Jim’s” Platform Means Certain Defeat. [From the Chicago Tribune, hitherto an ardent Blaine advocate.] Mr. Blaine’s general position in this interview is that the war tariff shall be perpetuated, the. tobacco, which he oddly includes among “the necessaries of life,” shall be made tree of tax, and that Congress must devise methods (or squandering the surplus by building fortifications that may be blown to smithereens by the next improvement of dynamite weapons, instead of removing it by the obvious and natural plan suggested by the President. This position will not commend itself to the Americau people, for unquestionably an immense majority believe in remitting a large share of these oppressive tariff taxes which bear upon the producing and consuming classes with crushing weight. It is the weakest ground Mr. Blaine has ever yet occupied, and no national party can expect to go into a Presidential campaign on that issue, no matter who may be be its leader, and win. It is a sufficient explanation of Mr. Blaine’s interview that he is a Pennsylvanian. He was brought up in an atmosphere of ultra-protection. He has sat at the feet of the high-tariff Gamaliels of that State, and imbibed thoir doctrines. Like all Pennsylvanians, Republicans or Democrats, he believes in enormous duties on imports for the purpose of coddling the mill bosses and protecting the so-called “infant industries” which long ago came of age and ought to be able to go alone. Every Pennsylvanian believes that the protective system promotes his interests, and that in promoting his interests it enhances the general good of the public. He also believes that the fanners out West are not injured by paying these enormous war bounties for the goods they oonsume, provided the tax goes into the pockets of Pennsylvanians. It is needless to say that it is a very narrow view. Mr. Blaine need not fear that a reduction of the tariff would cause a rush of factory operatives to the country and a consequent impoverisment of agriculture through excessive production and the ruin of the home market. If the wages of operatives are reduced,so will be the expenses of living, and the workers will have no occasion, out of mere spite, to flee the factory towns as the Jews fled Egypt. Tho declaration that hard times, panics, or any other sudden change in commerce will lead to an invasion of the country by city workers is a prediction often made but never verified. City workmen, accustomed to light labor, short hours, and all the amusements and dissipations of town life, can not be driven into the country and compelled to endure the hard toil, solitude, and isolation of the farm laborer. They will accept any wages in the cities before they will go on the farms. Such has been the universal experience in'the hardest of hard times. Deprived of wages and employment, the only city workers who seek the farms are those who were reared in the country and trained io youth to agricultural toil. When such has been the result in the worst panics and periods of depression ever known in this country, Mr. Blaine ought to rid himself of the Pennsylvania notion that a proper and necessary reduction of the excessive profits now made by mill and factory bosses will cause them to close their establishments and discharge their employes, or that the latter will go off in a huff and take to farming. Thorough Pennsylvanian that he is, Mr. Blaine can hardly treat the tariff question without reviving certain dogmas which are held almost as religion in that State by men of all parties, but which in other sections, and particularly in tho agricultural West, receive less and less credence year after year. First comes the familiar declaration that any proposed reduction of duties is in the nature of an attempt to secure “free trade,” or the total abolition of customhouse taxation. In fact, no considerable number of people in the United States favor “free trade” or anything approaching it, and moderate protection must of necessity prevail in the future for the reason that the revenue requirements of the Government are such that a scale of duties high enough to be actually protective will be imperative and must be preserved. Theoretically there may be a choice between five distinct policies—viz.: an ultra high tariff like the present, a high tariff like the. Clay tariff of 1842, a moderate tariff like that of 1846, a revenue tariff like that of 1857, or absolute free trade. There are many steps and stages between absolute i ree trade and high bounty protection. Ev--ery tariff is protective to the extent of the tax, whether it be 1 per cent,, 10 per cent., 50 per cent., or any other amount. The question is simply one of degree, and in the present situation of the Government the only issue is between an excessive tariff ■or the one substantially like the Clay tariff -of 1842 (then considered abnormally high, and higher than any tariff known before the present war tariff was adopted), which will afford moderate, justifiable and properly effective protection. There can be at present no issue of protection versus free trade. A tax of 1 per cent, on iron, steel, or any ■other product, would be simply protection to that extent. A tariff of 10 per cent, would be ten times as protective as one of 1 per cent., a tariff of 20 per cent, twice as protective as one of 10, and so on in proportion. Inasmuch as an average duty high aB Henry Clay ever advocated will be necessary to secure the revenues needed for the support of the Government, any question as to free trade or a very low tariff cannot be taken into consideration. Yet by Pennsylvanians, of all parties, the most moderate and necessary reductions are denounced as free-tradeism and hotly opposed. If Congress should adopt Clay’s high protective tariff of 1842, and cut off 33 £ per cent, from the present excessive duties, the result, according to Mr. Blaine, would be death and destruction to all protected interests. Under the tariff of 1846 the country escaped ruin, Mr. Blaine says, solely because of foreign wars creating a demand lor American products, and even as it was we had to endure a heavy draiu of gold. At that time Europe furnished no market except for cotton, tobacco, and turpentine, and this country was poor, producing little beyond its own needs. The powerful stimulus of

trade and commerce by the invention of labor-saving machinery had only begun to set in, and the country settled its foreign balances in gold because it coaid pay easier in the yield of the mines than in the productions of factories or farms. The country exported gold because it was the cheapest and best thing to do, and not because that policy was the result of the tariff. Mr. Blaine does not face the situation as it exists to-day. W T itb an increasing scarcity and appreciation of gold, the exhaustion of the arable public domain, and a heavy im* migration from Europe, there is no prospect that the prices of farm products or even the wages paid factory operatives will be advanced. The prices of agricultural produce are very low and promise to so continue for an indefinite period. The farmer buying his goods and supplies at a high protective bounty rate must sell his surplus products in the low free-trade markets of the world. If his condition or that of the factory operative is to be improved it must be by reducing the cost of living and cheapening the necessaries of life. Higher wages or higher prices for farm products become more and more improbable, and if the great laboring classes of the United States in city and country are to be benefited it must be by lessening the cost of living.

THE PAST AGAINST THEM

Tariff-Revision Speeches Deliv[ered in the Forty-seventh Congress. Republican Congressmen Now Protectionists Who Then Saw the Necessity for Reform. [Washington special to Chicago Tribune, Bep.] Some of the Repnblic&n Congressmen who are criticising the President’s message as a free-trade manifesto are thrown into confusion by their own records during the Forty-seventh Congress. This was the Congress which created the Tariff Commission. In the Senate, the third day after its meeting, Morrill, of Vermont, the high priest of protection, introduced a bill to secure tariff changes. In the course of the debate on the bill for creating a tariff commission almost every Republican who spoke committed himself to the urgent necessity of reforming the tariff. For instance, Senator Sherman thought it necessary to revise the tariff for the express purpose of reducing the taxes. He said: The bill assumes that there is a necessity for a revision of the tariff laws, and as to this necessity there is no controversy or dispute. The very great changes in the relative value of articles in the tariff schedule, the wonderful results that have arisen from improved methods of manufacture, as in the case of steel, the wholesale evasions of standards of value, as in the case of sugar, and the numerous incongruities and defects of existing laws, developed by trial of twenty years, imperfectly patched up by amendments—all these causes combined render it necessary to revise not only the rate of duties but the methods of ascertaining and collecting them. To tneae causes is also added the conceded fact that under existing law we are collecting from the people of the United States as national taxes the sum of fifty to one hundred millions of dollars more than is requisite to meet all the proper current expenditures of the Government and all our obligations to the public creditors and to comply with the sinking fund act for tho gradual reduction of the public debt. We agree that the tariff should be revised and the taxes be reduced. Senator Hawley said: I will vote in any direction to bring about a resolute attempt to give us a revision of the tariff. I say that as representing a protective constituency. I am for resolute, direct, immediate action in the direction of a wise revision of the tariff, whether by a commission or the usual mode. The gradual change in business in many directions, the changes in process of manufacture, the cheapening of production, and a hundred thing- I need not specify havo brought it to pass that the present tariff is a machine very much out of gear. It hurts American manufacturers. In short, it is inevitable. It is to be seen, without argument, that in the progress of the country a tariff.no matter how wisely drawn, must require revision. In tho House Mr. McKinley of Ohio said: There are excrescences in the present tariff which should be corrected. There are wrongs growing out of decisions of the Treasury Department and the courts which ought to be remedied at once, commission or no commis-sion-matters which ought not to be delayed for the adiustment of a commission, and which, if they are to be postponed until a commission which we may create shall make its report and Congressional action be had thereon, ought to defeat the whole scheme of a commission. The free list might be enlarged without affecting injuriously a single American interest. Mr. Burrows, of Michigan, said: Upon the first proposition—to wit: the necessity for a revision of tho tariff—there seems to he no contrariety of opinion. All parties, men of every shade of beliof, from the high rotectionist to the extreme free-trader, all unite n demanding a readjustment of the present tariff. These are only samples of what many other Republican members said.

Blaine anil the Tobacco Tax. Mr. James G. Blaine in his Parisian retreat is terribly exercised over the fact that President Cleveland classes tobacco among the luxuries. He draws a piteous picture of the millions of men “at work on the farm, in the coal mine, along the railroad, in the iron foundries,” etc., to whom the succulent “chaw” of tobacco is a necessity, and expectoration an unfailing joy. His heart, too, is wrung at the distress of (hose untold thousands who “seek the solace of a pipe or cigar after each meal” by reason of the internal revenue tax upon every ping of tobacco ancl every cigar.

But if Mr. Blaine were nearer the people and would wiue the protection him from his eyes, he would 6eo that the appeal for relief from the internal-revenue tax on tobacco dot-s not come from the consumers but from the manufacturers. The consumers of tobacco have witnessed a reduction in the tax of one-half witcin the last five years, but they have not been able to perceive a corresponding reduction in the price of the juicy plug or tne fragrant cigar. The manufacturer has pocketed the difference in the tax paid. And where has the United States reaped any benefit from the reduciion in the in-ternal-revenue tax on tobacco? Its receipts from this source under the old rate of 10 cents per pound for iue year ending June 30, 1882, were $47,34/280 By the reduction to 8 cents per pound, which went in o effect May 1, 1883, the receipts were cut down to $20,062,400 for the year ending June 30, It 81. For the fiscal year ended June 30 last the receipts from this same source were $30,108,067, an increase of $2,200,704 over the preceding year. The best proof possible that consumers have not been the beneficiaries of the reduced internal revenue levied on tobacco is afforded in the fact that th ■ price has not fallen so as to discourage the importa-

tion of tobacco. In the year 1880 the value of tobacco importations was $6,179,238, yielding $4,681,400 duty. In anticipation of the fall in prices prophesied to follow the redaction in the internal revenue on tobacco, in effect May 1, 1883, the importations for that year were forced up to $10,515,806, on which the duty was $7,601,638. The receipts for the next year naturally fell off $8,593,098, from which they have steadily grown until for the year ending June 30, 1887, they were nearly $12,000,000, from which $9,127,758 duty was collected. It is thus apparent that the redaction in the internal tax on tobacco has not discouraged its importation, which in 1887 was nearly half as gre.it again as it was in 1884. And why shonld it, since the consumer pays just as much for his ping and his cigar as he did before 1883? Mr. Blaine’s sympathy for the consumer is bogus. It is the capitalistic manufacturer of tobacco who wants to be relieved of the tax for his own benefit. —Chicago News.

A Shameless Misrepresentation. The Joliet Steel Rail Rolling MUIb Company issued an order on Saturday last, shutting down its works for an indefinite period, discharging the men and paying them off. The Superintendent of the mills accompanies the order by the statements that the mills have run steadily for six years, only interrupted by the strike es the employes in 1883, when these were compelled to accept 20 per cent, less wage's than was offered them at the beginning of the strike; that the plant is one of the most improved and successful in the world, capable of competing with any works known; that the reasons for the closing of the works are a depression in the rail market and lack of orders; and, finally, that the President’s message and the attitude of Congress on the tariff question so onsettled the industry that contracts for 1888 delivery coaid not be made with .any certainty as to prices, while with this uncertainty no orders could safely be contracted for, even if they were to be had. In reality no more brazen-faced, shame - less, and utterly false assertions than are contained in the latter part of this statement could be made by the most unscrupulous demagogue that ever undertook to deceive a people. The facts of the American steel-rail situation are briefly as follows, being condensed from an editorial in the Bulletin , the organ of the American Iron and Steel Association, of Nov. 30, several days previous to the publication of the President’s message: For several weeks prior to the above date the steel manufacturers waited in vain for orders for rails from the railway companies, the expectancy assuming quite a panicky aspect. Finally, when it became unmistakable that the railroads, the grangers especially, had decided to withdraw for a time from the market, the panic gave place to a better feeling on the part of the rail-makers, in view of the estimate that new and old i oads would require in 1888 at least 75 per cent, as many railß as in 1887. Still, when at the steel manufacturers’ meeting, which took place at the middle of November, it was admitted that the railroads did not exhibit a sign of a desire to take orders at any deliverable prices, the Bulletin outlined their programme by saying that the rail-makers could not be blamed if they should reach the conclusion that it was better for them to close their works than make rails at a loss.

• This, in reality, is what the rail-makers had, at that time, concluded to do in order to bring tbe railroads to their terms. Now, while the above programme is being carried out, it is sought to make a political question out of a fight between the steel-rail octopus trust and the railways of the country. At the same time, every protection organ in the* country has doubtless been given the cue to work the disreputable racket for all it is worth. —Clticago News.

Time to Draw the Line.

Last year Cleveland’s heroic veto alone stood between the depletion of the Treasury and the dependent pensions bill; this year the country looks to Congress to stand the brunt of the profligate scheme to distribute the surplus. Never in the history of nations has there been such generosity shown to the defenders of their country as is exhibited in the pension legislation and pay-roll of the United States. The proverbial ingratitude of a republic has been grandly refuted. The annual sum paid for pensions in the United States last year nearly equaled the cost of the magnificent military establishment of Germany, which for the year 1886 was $84,968,140. That our readers may have some idea of the generosity of the United States in the line of pensions, we invite their study of the following table of amounts paid out of the National Treasury for pensions from 1861 to 1887:

1862 say?, 170 IH6S 1,018,5131 1854 4,:,85,41!' 1805 16,34, ,'.21 ]S ,6 15,605,5.,01867 20,9 >0,562; lo«>8 ...... 23.782,387 1869 28,476,622! 1670 23,340,' Oil 1871 31,4 3,695 j 1872 28,533,4 3 1873 2427 l 18/4 29,038,41 I 1175 29,456,2101

The estimated pension appropriation for the present year is $80,000,(100. In the face of this showing the National Pension Committee of the orand Army of the Republic has presented a bill to Congress calculated to lap up every surplus dollar in the treasury. It asks for an invalid pension of sl2 a month to all persons who served three months in the army or navy and were honorably dischaiged, no matter how tbeir present disability was occasioned. It also has wide-open provisions for the pensioning of the widows and children as er the dite of the pensioner’s death, without regard to the cause of the pensioner’s death. An annual surplus of $100,003,01)0 would vanish before such a ra\enous bill as this, which is being urged by pension agents who are striving their utmost to disgust the people over the whole mercenary business which masquerades in the sacred garb of patriotism. Senator Hawley says: “It is not the fault of the Bepublieans that the taxes are so high, and that all this surplus has accumulated. Revenue measures must start in the House, and the Democrats have had the House ten out of twelve years.” The Senator is disingenuous. He knows that tariff' reform every time has been beaten in the House by the Republicans and the handful of Randall Protectionists, who pv ctically are Republicans on the tariff question; and that, if it had not been beaten there, it would have been beaten in the Republican Senate —and with his assistance, top. A good conscience is the best divinity.

1879 828,257,396 11877 27,963,752 ;1878 27,137,019 1879 : 3;,121,482 1880.. 56,777,174 1881 50,059, VBO 1882 63,345,194 ‘1683 66,012,574 1884 55,42!',228 (1885 56,102,267 1386 63,404,864 1 1887.. 75,029,101 ! Total 8832,031,770

OPINIONS OF THE MESSAGE.

VietTs of Senators end Congressmen —Comments of Different Newspapers. Republican, Democratic and Mugwump Sentiment as to the Effect of the Document CONGRESSIONAL, OPINIONS. Both Shies Pleased—Expressions of Senators and Representatives. Both political pin tion express satisfaction with its utterances on the tariff. The Democrats are pleased with its oold declarations in favor of tariff revision and the reduction of customs duties, regarding its utteranoes as a platform of principles upon which they can appeal to the country for a continuance of public confidence and support, while for diametrically opposite reasons the Republicans profess to be pleased with it. Republican leaders say the message removes all doubt touching the attitude of the administration and the dominant party on the tariff question, clearly defines the issue between the two parties, and places the Democrats squarely In favor of a policy bordering on free trade and inimical to the great industrial interests of the country. Senators Hiscock and Evai-ta and other New York Republicans are confident that the message will insure a Republican victory in that State next tall, and Senator Sherman believes It will demoralize the Democratic party in Ohio. Mr. Randall would Bay nothing about the document until he had hod opportunity to give It careful reading and study, but his manner indicates that the message goes much farther in the direction of tariff reform than he expected. Judge Kelley rogards it as a weak argument for breaking down tho present tariff system, many of its sentences sounding like the frequent utterances of Mills and Morrison in the House and Book in the Senate. [Washington special to Chicago Tribune.] In the House, alter the reading of the message. leading Democrats expressed themselves pointedly as follows: Mr. Mills said: “Good, elegant, it could not be better." Mr. Springer said: “That is a good one. He hits the nail on the head every time. We have our platform.” Mr. Townshend said; “Elegant, elegant. It boats them all. It could not be better We aro going to stand by him, and we are going to win.” Judge Seney, of Ohio. Baid, laconically: “Good.” Mr. Hemphill expressed satisfaction. Mr. Bandall declared that he had nothing to say on tho subject at present. He was going to read tbe message again. Mr. Bland said : “It’s the best we ever had. 1 have not heard its equul since I have been In Congress.” On the Republican side Mr. McKinley said: “It is a splendid free-trade document. As good as if written at the Cobden Club. Indei d, it oould not be better if taken from some of the Cobden Club documents. I greet it with pleasure.” And he smiled ironically. Mr. Buchanan, of New Jersey, said it put the Democrats just where his party wanted them. Cleveland had shown his band, and the campaign of ’BB would be fought on that. Mr. Bayne, of Pennsylvania, said : “It Is too free trade. It would be suicidal to cut down tariff duties with the balance of trade against us as it Is. ” “It was a one-sided and prejudiced dlsorssion of financial theories, ” said Mr. Cannon, of Illinois. “It was not like anything we have ever had before us or will have again. ” “It makes the issue for the Democratic party. They were afraid to make it themselves,” remarked Mr. Adams, of Illinois. “That was a very good protection message,” said Mr. Jehu Baker, the successor of Col. Morrison. “It did not go us far toward fro® trade as Morrison would have gone." The Democratic Senators, almost to a man, said the message suited them exactly. Among the Republican Senators there is a large percentage of protectionists, and their views were colored accordingly, but they all praised the President for defining Himself clearly. Senator Farwell thought the message was well enough in its way as an approach toward free trade, but he didn’t think the Republicans were ready to travel that way. Senator Cullom looked upon it as throwing down the glove and inviting the Republicans to take it up, which he was in favor of doing. Senator Allison thought the President was right in insisting that taxation must be reduced, but he did not think it would be done with a leaning to free trade. Senator Spooner regarded the message as an admirable free-trade essay. Senator Frye said it was good for 5,010 votes in Maine, while Senator Hiseoek thought the Republicans could carry New York by 80,000 if the Democrats made Cleveland’s message their platform.

EDITORIAL COMMENT. How the Document lit Viewed by Different Newspapers. [Chicago Tribune, Rep.] The message is able and statesmanlike; luminous in Btyle; perspicuous in statement; oloar in its reasoning ; and irrefutable in its conclusions. It is moderate protection doctrine such as has been exemplified more than once in ths public utterances of both the great political parties. It risos above party lines and presents a common basis of patriotic statesmanship on which Republicans and Democrats are bound by every consideration of the public welfare and of political expediency/to stand together. The position taken in the previous Congress by the Minnesota delegation and some other Republicans must be stoutly maintained by the Republican side of the House at this session or they, and perhaps the party which they represent, will be overwhelmed [Philadelphia Times, Ind.] While the President urges the tnorough revision of tariff duties he is most emphatic in* demanding that our manufactures shall be fully protected. Keeping tnis in view, all assumption of a free-trade theory or purpose vanishes from the minds of the American people. The message will inspire more discussion and investigation of the exact relations of the tariff to capital, industry, and trade than any document that has emanated from the Chief Magistrate. [Chicago Inter Ocean, Rep.] The President has issued a free-trade pamphlet in which no argument is educed that has not been used by all the Cobden Club organs till it has become stale and threadbare. [Chicago News, Mugwump.] There is no partisanship, no free trade, no appeal to class prejudice, no special hobby, in the President’s message. It is plain patriotic common sense from opening to close. He has done well in confining it to the one subject of tariff reform. His action must focus public attention upon the necessity of a systematic reduction of the tariff without prejudice and without favor. [Boston Globe, Dem.l Congress has only to frame and pass a tariff bill in the spirit and on the lines indicated in this patriotic and aide message in order to solve the most difficult financial situation which, in a time of peace, has ever confronted the American people. [New York Times, Mugwump.] Mr. Cleveland has done an act of statesmanship in the best sense. Recognizing a great duty, he has performed it with Rourage, with firmness, and at the right time. Judged by any ordinary standard of political expediency, the President’s act is inexpedient. He has forced upon his party an issue as to which the party is divided, and so divided that unless the minority yield it can defeat the will of the majority. He has done this on the eve of a national contest in which a considerable number of men of influence in the party have been urging him to avoid this issue, and threatening him acid the party with disaster, if he did not avoid it. [New York Sun, anti-Cleveland Dem,] Mr. Cleveland bag never before in a public paper taken sides squarely upon the question. Ho has done so now in a manner that leaves room for no misunderstanding. , It is a bold thing to do, and the President deserves credit for the plainness of his speech. Nobody can accuse him of hedging or haggling or juggling with wovds. The message is the most remarkable, and in some respects the mo-t important, document that fe has produced since his political, career began. [New York World, anti-Cleveland Dem.] The admirable message of th«i President has

given to tbe Democratic party what it ha® lone lacked—an issue and a loader. The issue ia tax reform. Tbe leader is the President. * * * It can tutrdly be that tbe President has not at this juncture influence enough to Secure the union of the Democrats in tbe Houso upon a measure of revenue redaction and tariff reform. [New York Commercial-Advertiser. Mugwump.] President Cleveland’s concise, able, and manfully canuid message to tbe newly assembled Fiftieth Congress cannot fail to make a profound sensation. The novelty in form and the unconventional tone of the message, as well aa the urgent and overshadowing importance of the single topic it considers, wi*.l attract the universal attention of the nation to the document. If we art ! not mistaken it will have a decisive weight in the future of parties and legislation. (Philadelphia Press, Rep.] A thousand thanks to President Cleveland for tho bold, manly, and unequivoeal avowal of bis extreme free-trade purposes. And a thousand rebukes and defeats for the false, dangerous, and destructive policy which he thus frankly aud unreservedly proclaims. The message deserves all Hie glory of courage, all the praise of high public issue, all the condemnation of utter ruinous heresy. It is a surprise in its method, and a still greater surprise in its matter. It comes like the sudden, echoing boom of a groat gun signaling a crucial fight ou unexpected ground. In its immediate flash of light aud in its broad bearings it looms up as one of the most momentous political events since the war. It plants the President and his party squarely on free trade; it clarifies the next Presidential battle as by a lightning stroke; it makes free trade vs. protection the overshadowing issue; it dwarfs and dismisses all other questions; it clears away all cowardly evasions and juggling subterfuges ; it ends oil pitiful personal bespattering, aud it summons tbe American people to decide tho supreme question whether the grand protective system which has built up our spieudid industries shall be overthrown or not, [Cincinnati Times-Star, Rep.] While oritioißiug the position of the President on this question, we must express our admiration for his bold and decisive stand. It compels his party to take a position which moans something. They can no longer skulk around behind glittering phrases which mean nothing. (Cincinnati Telegram, Rep i It is easy to see that Mr. Cleveland expects to be tho Democratic candidate neat year from *the way in which he bows and smiles first to one side and thou to the other of the tariff controversy. The message would not attract attention as a state paper had it come from the head of a department instead of from the President. It will not add to Mr. Cleveland’s reputation ae a statesman, but it will strengthen his chances of reuomination, whioh he probably cares a great deal more about, [Baltimore American, Rep.] The President evidently bases bis political hopes for thb future on tariff reduelvni, ana the whole campaign has, as far as a message cun do so, been precipitated on that portentous line. (Baltimore American, Dem.] It is cloar, cogent, and unanswerable, aB a demonstration of the nature and importance of tbe duty now resting upon tho legislative branch of the Government of relieving the Treasury of its embarrassments. It is addressed to the people as w< 11 as to Congress and will, no doubt, receive due attention from .both. k I Baltimore Herald, Ind.'l Mr. Cleveland's plea for a reduced tariff is both ingenious and foroible. His arguments are calculated to make a profound impression on the country, whatever be their elToot on Congress, It is quite plain that the messago is tho product of a oonferonce among loading Democrats, and that It is designed to serve as the chief campaign document of 1888. (•Baltimore Nows, Dein.] This makes up the Presidential issue for next year, which will be distinctly and definitely betweeu protection and tariff relorrn, |St. Louis Post-Dispatoh, Ind. Dena.l Tho practicability of Mr. Cleveland’s scheme of tax reduction dopeuds so much on the assent of the conflicting lt.oal interests represented in Congress that any bill which passes both houses must be a “give and take” compromise between these conflicting interests. If it is found that some it them are deaf to Mr. Cleveland's admonitions ou the subject of putting the general welfare above all local and particular interest, and that the tobacco tax will have to go with some of the moro iniquitous tariff taxes, Mr. Cleveland will be i>reoluded from vetoing such a bill by what he has said of the necessity of getting rid of the surplus. Ho has his preference as to methods, and expresses It frankly, but apparently realizes the fact that even an inferior and very objectionable method of to/ redaction is better than none. [St. Louis Republican, Dem.l The message will haye a good eff< ot on Congress and the country. We believe it will do much to simulate Congress to frame and pass 4 fair and wise reduction-of-revenuo bill and discourage the factious opposition which has defeated two such hills in the lust two Congresses. [Boston Journal, Hep ] We do not approvo the President’s recommendations, but we may frankly say that we like the tone of his message, especially the seriousness with whioh ho urges upon the at* tontiou of Congress the problem of the surplud and the tariff. His discussion of the tariff as the cause of existing difficulties is disappointing in the narrowness of its views aud the fallacy of its logic. [Boston Transcript, Mugwump.] No one can doubt that President Cleveland possesses civic courage, whatever else he may lack, after reading his message. This document discusses with great clearness and plainness a subject of vital interest to all departments of industry. He does not appear in this raessace as the reckless disturber of trade or as heading a crusade aga nst manufactures, and it is evident that he would readily Bign any tariff bill that would avert future financial disasters and relieve the country from a portion of its burden of taxation. [Boston Traveler, Rep.] He furnishes conclusive proof of his surrender to the free-traders. Possibly this may be the price of his renomination, but he makes up the issue squarely—so squarely that bo wiU doubtless yet find it to be a dear price. [Boston Herald, Mugwump.) It is a clear, sound, practicable argument throughout.

COLLAPSE OF A TOWER.

Four Men Killed by the Fall of a Water Tower at ThoiiiasvlHo, Ga., Three Other* Seriously Injured—Hazardous Rescue of Other Workmen. Fotvr men wore instantly killed, three seriously and perhaps fatally injured, and four left clinging like human flies to the ruins sixty-five feet above the gronnd, by the falling of a water- tower at Thomas* ville, Ga., the particulars of which are furnished in the following telegram trom that place: It was about 10 o’clock when the crash came. It could be heard for half a mile, and people rushed to the scene from every direction. A horrible sight met tbeir eyes. Protruding from the ruins could be seen portions of the bodies of the dead and injured, the latter calling for assistance, while clinging to the sides of that portion of the tower still standing, with nothing to clutch or rest their feet on but precariously projecting bricks, were four men left uninjured by the crash, nut in imminent danger of being dashed to pieces by failing to the stouee below. When the hook and led er company arrived a new horror was added to the situation by the discovery that the ladders would not reach within twenty feet of the men above. A rescue with ropes was the only chance left. A brick tied to a cord, which was in turn fastened to a rope, was thrown into the air, and fell on the other side of tho wall. A score of hands quickly pulled the rope within reach of one of the imperiled men. At this moment the wall swa' ed and looked as if it was about to tumble over and ndd more victims to the death list, but it did not, and the man released bis hold of the bricks, went down the rope hand over hand until he reached the top of the ladder, and descended to the ground. As he reached the earth a great cheer went up from the erowd, butitquickly subsided at remembrance of the danger the remaining three men were still confronting. The rope was moved from cue of the trio to th-other untu at last all stood safe below. Attention was next turned to those buried in the debris. Four were taken out dead, terribly crushed and disttgured, while four were so seriously injured that their recovery i» doubtful.