Democratic Sentinel, Volume 12, Number 3, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 February 1888 — Blaine’s “Free Chaw.” [ARTICLE]

Blaine’s “Free Chaw.”

George M. Stearns at the recent Boston Tariff Reform Co vention touched off Jim Blaine’s Paris Manifesto in the following language: “Fuel and warmth, and food and clothing and comfort and health are the real necessaries, andjthings with which we should minister to the people’s benefit. — Talk about tobacco b 1 ing a n. cessity of life Look at that boy up there in the attic this cold night shivering in his rags, ami wishing that bankets were not such a luxury, but contenting himself with the thought that his father is chewing an untaxed cud down there in the kitchen! (Great laughter and applause.) Think of that wife, with her little thin dress, longing for a shawl to wrap around her to protect her freezing form, compel-

ed to console herself with the tnrwledga that her .usbanl is smoking an untaxed oigar in the saloon! See that boy coming down Washington st eet, his legs the size of your thumb, carrying cane rigger than his body—(great laughter) —sallow, pim led, worn, lighting his cigarette »-t every street corner, and thanking God that we lave such a statesman as Blaine to give us this necessary of lif a , an intaxed cigarette! (Loud laughjar and applause.) Isa v that one oi these boys dropped dead in the street in Slew York from freely partaking of this elixir of life.— (Lauglrer.) All this is worse than rot —it is wickedness, and we mean to make use of this opportunity, this sur lus for better

things. We mein a reform that shall sweep av ay useless taxation from coal and sa t and sugar and lumber and woo l and clothing—the grand universal necessaries of lite. (Applause.) We mean [a reform that shall give re’ief, not to the man wh t is chewing the untaxed cud in the saloon or smoking his untariffed pipe around a bar--room file; we mean a relief that 'shall st)etch out to every cabin and every humble home, to every kitchen and chamber, to every table and every fireside.” This is the Democratic doctrine, as oulined by President Cleveland’s message to Congress. Hon. Rowland G. Hazard, of Rhode Island, himself a large manufacturer, and, by the way, a Republican, tells the Republican hign-tariff advocates that the wool manufacturers ot the New England States are greatly dissatisfied with the present tariff on raw materials. “Under the high protective tariff,” says Mr, Hazard, “we have a system which has been found to fail entirely in producing the results desired. It has neither fostered wool growing nor wool manufacturing; it does not even prevent the competition of foreign wool and foreign goods. It imposes a heavy tax upon productive industry. It has been tried now for over twenty years. Is it deserving o a longer trial? Ought not the statesmen of our nation, instead of appealing to the prejudices of voters by the cry of ‘protection,’ to cook some means to place the manufactur.ng industries ok the country on a prosperous basis, to the end that American workingmen may be profita ,ly employed and American wool growers may be furnished with a mod market? This can only be dime for tne woolen ndustry by lowerng the tariff, and so extricating it from the stiained and awkward position in which it is placed, and by allowing the American manufacturer a fair field in which to exercise his skill. The prosperity of the manufacturer will bejftke prosperity of the wool grower.”