Democratic Sentinel, Volume 12, Number 38, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 October 1888 — AN EDITOR’S ELOQUENCE [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

AN EDITOR’S ELOQUENCE

HON. HENHY WATTEESON’S GREAT SPEECH DETROIT. He Gives a Clinical Dissection of the Republican Platform—Falsi Pretenses or ; the G. O. P. Shown Up in Burning Words —An Earnest Appeal for the Reduction of War Taxes. Sensible men. surveying the state of affairs, may well ask about it, and ask themselves how we may best be saved from the mountain of war taxes on which we stand, in order to reach the dead level of a | ermanenc and prosperous peace j tooting. There is no question now for tuis coantry so important as this, it is, indeed, thj issue j of the campaign, and is purely one of condition. And in no wise one of fears. Now that the lines ■of battle are fixed—fixed by the message of the President, fixed by the Mi.ls bill and the debate in Congress, fi ed by the St. Louis platform, and fixed by the acceptance of the President—it is purely immaterial what opinion gentlemen •on either side may ehtertain touching the original principle of taxation. Mr. Blaine,.ior example, is opposed to the repeal of the whisky tax, while the Republican platform demands iis repeal; yet Mr. Blaine supports without question the Republican tic et. When it comes to doctrinal hairsplitting, there are differences and degrees among tte protectionlists as well as differences and degrees among the revenue reformers. But this is neither a -doctrinal nor a personal campaign. This is a -campaign of party foices and organized ideas. Eaeu party said what it mamt ,n its declaration -of principles, and each must abide tbe conse■queoces of its act and word. It is too late for revision, it is too late for afterthoughts; tbe record is made up, and, as our friend teoator Blackburn said on one occasion, he who dallies is a dastard, he who doubts is damned. lam going to-night to take these two national platforms, to put them on tbe stand and to let thim say bow they stand upon this great issue. It seems to me we have bsen so assayed with being free-traders that we have quite forgotten to apply to their plaiform tbe same logical tests they have been allowed to apply to our own; I ■want to go over them specifically and see how ■they stand. You all know that the tariff is a tax levied by the government upon articles of foreign import to raise money for its own tupport. We have had high taxes and low taxes ; we have diad peace tariffs and war tariffs. The present tariff unites all the bad features of all the had tariffs that ever preceded, for it is a peace tariff on a wax basis. That is to say, though reconstructed in time of peace, it actually multiplied and augmented all the impositions put upon the country during a time of war. Those impositiobs were confessedly a great burden upon the patriotism of the people. They were confessedly made in response to the public •exigency. Their authors pr mised when they made them that they should not outlast “that exigency; and yet the only revision they have bad, and then at the bands of the Republicans, since the war has not only failed to reduce them but has actually increased them ; so that now they are higher than they were when, as a measure of military nece sity, they were created. Nor is this all, nor the worst of it, for their authors, recanting all their original pledges, now tell us that they are here forever, and that they shall never be revised except,to he made not lower, but higher. And in proof •of that I come without further parley to that fantastic ebullition of political inisinforma ion, that curious receptacle of dry bones of the dead languages, that antiquarian •comic almanac and last chapter in the gospel, you know, the Republican platform. Gentlemen, I have had a little experience with platformmaking, and with the platform of my own party, and I know what it is to be suspected of being a little (oo honest and see ng a little too far ahead for the use of this world; but if I were a Republican and had written this platform of my friend McKinley, I would not be living now aB he is to tell the tale. It is the most tedious and most irrelevant piece of jocosity, the most as.tonishing example of going back into the dark ages in quest of something without finding it, yet produced by the political anuals of the country, Dr. Burchard’s famous oration 10 Brother Blaine alone excepted. Perusing that platform, I am in a state of perpetual wonder how it happens that any man could have been so funny and so blind, because as a rule humor is clearsighted and sensible. I say funny with porfect advisement, it is funny in its errors, funny in its inconsistencies, funny in its very falsehoods. A clever rascal said to me such a platform would .at least have avoided the mistake of arraigning the administration of Grove ■ Cleveland on a series of specific <tions, each one of whicii is a direct and damaging indictment of antecedent Republican policies. But that is just what this platform does irom first to last, and before I come to the main p oint, let me, for purposes cf illustration, point you out a few of them. I will take them at random ; it dot sn’t make much •difference where you bogin. For example, this platform says that the Republican party con■demns the policy of the administration in its efforts to demonetize silver and favors the re•duction of letter postage to ono eent. Why, it was the Republican party that demonetized silver. It was Ihe Democratic party that remonetized it. It is true that, tbe policy •of the Treasury under the present administration has been set aga'nst the continued coinage ■of the metal, and to that ext nt has been over:ruled by tbe Democratic ma ovitv in Congress; hut it is on a dir jet line with the policy of the Treasury under three Republican secrets res including John Sherman. And that is the son. I suppose, why the Republican platform denounces it. But postag , letter postage, cheaper postage reduce! to me cent! The Republicans say they are in favor of that. Whv, gentlemen, nearly a year beforj the adoption of this comic almanac. I mean this platform, nearly a year, Senator Beck, of Kentucky, introduced into the Republican Senate exactly such a message. It was referred by t e Republicans of the Senate to the Republican Committee on PostoClces, and there it sweetly sleeps to-night. Ai d it sleeps so soundly that the Kentucky Senator, Democrat and Scotchman as he is. has not been strong enough to wake it up. Perhaps he will have better luck after the cows •come home in November. Well, next they demand the restoration of our merchant marine. Who destroyed it? When the Democratic party went out of power, after twenty-eight years of incumbency, the oceans of the world were white with American sails. There was not a port in Christendom which wai not gladdened and mode brighter by the starry emblem of the republic, floating from a Yankee masthead. How stood the account aft r twentyfive yearß of Republican domination ? A friend -of mine who lias just returned from an extensive tour in foreign lands—not Mr. Blaine—this friend of mine recently told mo that the only American ship he found in all IPs travels was tho rotten hulk of an old Confederate cruiser stranded on the coast of Barbary, and used by the Arabs as a sort of wharf boat. But still the Republicans demand the restoration of our mer--chant marine, annihilated by a quarter of a century of Republican policies. Well, here is another good one. They say “We d-clare our hostility to the introduction into this country of foreign contract labor.” A self-accuser again. It was the Republican party that originated that debasing system. It was the Republican party that stuck to it like a brother. It was the Democratic party that forced the passage of laws restraining it. It is a Democratic administration which is enforcing those laws as they never were enforced by any Republican. It is a Democratic committee of Congress which is now going about the country investigating violations of the law and undertaking to see what can be done to make it still more effective, and every man caught in tne foreign contract lubor business thus far is howling for high tariff. But still this ostrich of a platform sticks its head behind the rock and de'.nounces the introduction of foreign contract labor. I think ! will pass over. I will jump the references to the Monroe doctrine and the Mormons as hardly worth particular attention, as simple jocose foot-notes stuck in to fill out the page’ and I will also jump the reference 1 o the heathen Chinese. I am going to do that because the nomination of Harrison, China’s own, meets the reference to Chinese cheap labor. That nomination, it seemß to me, sufficiently punctuates that. lam going to jump these because I want to get as soon as I can to a clause which, in view of recent events, seems to me to rise to the dignity of what the boys used to call “A good joke on Schneider.” Stand from under, gentlemen, while I read it; “We denounco the Democratic administration for its weak and unpatriotic treatment of the fishery question." How is that for high, my countrymen? Why, Grover Cleveland took the lion’s tail and jerked it clean out of its socket, and hedook that lion's tail and lashed the Republican Senate into kingdom come with it. But stiff this Republican “What Is It” denounces the administration for its weak and mnpatriotio treatment of the fishery question.

Thns ft is, gentlemen, that the Republican party is nothing if not a great warrior on paper. For a great many years it did not need any other oriflamme than the bloody shirt; bat the bloody shirt teems somehow to hare worn out, and won’t serve its purpose any longer, and so it mnstget out another red rag, and it finds this red rag in the British lion, which with one reach of his big, broad hand, Grover Cleveland snatched bald-headed, and ever since, these warriors of battles that were never fought, by them, have been running about, hither and thither, and wringing their hands, and asking one another if they had seen any stray lions lying about here. There used to be in the old Bowery Theater of the city of New York (there may be some middle-a:ed people in this very audience who will remember it), an actor by the name of Kirby. Kirby was the pride and glory of the Bowery. He had just one single act, but that act kept the Bower Theater going season after season, year after year. Kirby wrapped the American flag around him, rushed down to the footlights, fired off two horse pistols, and died like a son of a gun. Poor Kirby actually died years ago. His hones, rest his soul, were carried to the potter’s field. All that is left behind him, of himself, his personal representative and residuary legatee, is the Republican party, and that is bound to the same destination. I beg your pardon, gentlemen, I meant to stir np no such flood of levity as this. This is no laughing matter. Let u- dry our eyes and come to the main point; let us come to the issue which divides the parties, as it appears in these two platforms. The Republican platform starts out with the declaration that “we are uncompromisingly in favor of the American system of protection,” and then all of a sudden it seems as though they had not done it enough and they reiterate that “the American system of protection must be maintained." Now, that means nothing at all, nothing whatever. It is no more an American system of protection than a Canadian system of protection, than a Russian system of protection,

or a German, or a French, for all those countries are pro.e.tion countries. ;Fifty years before free trade was seriously thought of in England It actually existed in America. Fifty years before ColxLn and Peel carried their measures of free trade—l want to emphasize this statement —tbe Government, of the United States, with Washington as President and Hamilton as Secretary of the Treasury, proposed to institute free trade between England and the United States, and the oaer was rejected by England. At the very moment when Mr. Clay gave the name of "American" to the system of protection proposed by him, the English tariff ws< higher than the American tariff, and England was more of a protection country than the United States. Mr. Clay h inself only pleaded first for three years, and afterward for nine years, as quite sufficient to develop certain infant industries, for whom exclusively lie pleaded. There was no thought in those days of the wages of workingmen. All that was thought of was the development of our infant industries. There was no tho ght of protection except as a temporary policy. Never until this platform did any set of p«rty leaders dare propose it as a principle, and in doing it now they go contrary wise to the utterances of all their own statesmen and all their own platforms, this one alone excepted. But their citation is as untruthful as their declaration, for in the next sentence they say that “The abandonment of this protective system has always been followed by general disaster to all interests, except those of the usurer and sheriff.” Why, fellow-citizens, it never has been abandoned at all. We have had, as I said a while ago, high tariffs and low tariffs, war tariffs and peace tariffs, and the country has prospered under all of them and suffered under all of them. We have had good times and bad times under all our tariffs, but there has never been a tariff since the first one was created that did not contain protection and plenty of it. The greatest financial disaster the country ever knew, that of JBi3, came when we had had the inestimable b essings of this high protective'war tariff for ten years. The highest higi.-water mark of national development and prosperity we have ever known was the period of the Democratic revenue tariff, known as the “Walker tariff,” extending from 1816 to 1331. And when this platform says, “That the departure from a protective system," which has never bean abandoned at all, “has been followed by general disaster,” it is an insult to popular intelllcence, and flies directly in the face of history, both current and ancient. The clause that contains it has only two declarations, each one of which is a falsehood, and it is only a mercy of God that there was not a third, for that needs must have been a falsehood. And now having fairly unlimbered itself, gotten its joints well oiled, this platform denounces the Mills bill as hostile to the general, agricultural, mechanical, and laboring interests of the country, and goes out of its way to specify

those clauses of the bill which put wool on the free list, for its particular denunciation. Now, there is no feature of the measure proposed by the Democratic Ways and M ans Committee which will better hear discussion than this one, and I propose to make a test case of it. I propose to meet it squarely. Palms in uno, fa Urns in omnia. If the Republican platform breaks down here there is nothing to it anywhere, and there really i nothing to it anywhere. ’Due whole Republican plan of battle in this campaign rests upon the sheerest assumption, its right wing resting on Mr. Blaine, its left wing resting on free whisky, and uoihing to sustain its center bnt the “fat” that Mr. Foster may be able to fry out of My Lord Carnegie and othe s of his ilk. Well, they say in plain words: “We denounce the purpose of the Democrats to put wool on the iree list." That is their sentiment in a nutshell. The wool duties at this moment, under the pres -nt tariff, range about 58.81. The Mills bill proposes to reduce them twenty per cent., or to 38.81, but they find this twentv per cent, reduction is putting wool on the free list. Now, if the wool grower doesn’t complain o' that, what has the manufacturer to complain of? Now I don t hear of any conversion among the wool growers. All that I can hear of the wool growers is through protectionist attorneys whom they have not t mployed, and Republican newspapers which they don’t read. It is the Republican manufacturer who thinks to score a point for his party by raising an outcry against free wool, but in this, as In all else, and like all his compatriots, he is thoroughly and absolutely inconsistent. Away back in 1836, when the woolen schedules were first increased, the Wool Growers’ Asociation of America, their national organization, through its Secretary, Johu L. Hays, sent a communication to Con gress, and here is what they said then, and this is official and authentic: “The wool manufacturers of the country would prefer tha total abolition of specific duties, provided they could get all their raw material free, and an actual net protection of twenty-five

cents.” Now, that is what they proposed. This was in 1866 —their raw material free Mid an actual net protection of twenty-five cents. There was at that time a ten cent internal revenue duty upon the made-up article, so in order to give them what they wanted Congress gave them thirty-five cents protection, instead of the tweniy-five cents they demanded themselves, and ten cents to cover the internal revenue tax and a rebate to cover the raw material. Now, they have grown so fast that they tell us that the bill that proposed to give them so much more than they proposed to ask in 18<i6 is a frestrade measure and will ruin them if it becomes a law. Mind you, the interested always have attorneys at Washington, and soon after they got 33 per cent, protection they slipped around to the W ays and Means Commit.ee room and got the internal revenue tax taken off, leaving them really 33 per cent., instead of the 25 per cent, that they asked. Now the Mills bill proposes to give them their raw material free and actually increase the duty on the made-up article from 36 cents to 40 cents and they cry back “free trade.” Now, fellowcitizens, if they call that free trade, what do you think they wou.d call protection ? Do you think that anything less than the earth would satisfy them? So it is all along the line with all other industries that have their hook in this monstrous tariff. The farmer gets the butt end of it all the time. And why, why is it that the wool-grower is not raising a disturbance? Why is it that when his product is put on the free list he does not go to vVashington and clamor for protection ? It is simply bocause the fanner, the wool-grower particularly, has found out long ago that what the tariff gave him at one end it took away from him at the other end, and a little more for good measure. It is true that he receives an increased price for his wool from the manufacturer, but when he got it back again in ready-made clothing he had to surrender back to the manufacturer the increased price he had received, and a bonus for the honor of dealing with him. Now if there is anything clear on earth It Is the simple woolen illustration, embracing the clothing of all, but particularly the clothing of the poor, as to which this Republican platform goes out of its way to arraign the Democratic party. There is no other example which could not be made as clear, but there is none which is so simple and which so directly appeals to universal want and universal intelligence, for every man can figure 1 this but for himself. There is no chance to confuse by a mountain of statistics whichnobody would read, and which nobody could understand if they did read. Tho whole argument is a paraphrase of figures Intended to mislead and confuse the people in the interest of protection. But, gentlemen, I must not leave this platform. This platform was deliberately enacted. It was made by men who are in oharge of the legislation of the country. It was made by men

who, if the Republicans control the next House, are permitted to bring in a tariff bill based upon as clear a statement as is contained in this platform. Now, let ns see what this statement is. Let us see what they propose in lieu of the Mills bill. They stare out by saying that the Republican party was induced to revise the tariff, an 1 that in tbe first place it will take the tax off cigarettes and other forms of tobacco. Well, one of the objections to the Mills bill is that it does that. But ibo reason the Republicans give for it is one of the funniest things in that funny business they were at in making this platform. But they are in favor of taking the tax off cigarettes because it is a harden to agiitulture. And what about the tax on pots and pans and plows and ever . thing else that enters into popular consumption? They propose to take the tax off whisky and distilled spirits used In manufactures and arts. Then they propose to revise the customs duties so as to check imports, as though ths present duties were not in all conscience high enough for protective purposes. And then, if there is any surplus left in the Treasury, they projoDse broadly to repeal the internal revenue taxes altogether. That means free whiskv and dear blankets. That means free whisky and dear stockings. That means free whisky and dear everything. How natural it was. How natural it was aftei constructing this scheme of free whisky and prohibitory duties that they should adopt the supplemental resolution declaring it as the opinion of the Republican party that the first concern of all good government is the virtue of the people and the purity of the home. And that they shonld d-clare that the Republican party sympathizes with all wise and well directed ssbemes for the propagation ol virtue and morality. They sand the sugar, and water the milk, and lard the butter, and everybody is invited in to prayer. “The devt was sick, the devil a saint would be; the devil got well, the devil a saint was he.” It is hard tc be serious, it is-hard to be courteous, it impossible to he respectful in the presenoe of suet

a sham as this Republican platform. If its terms could be carried out in good faith, if those who proposed them have any idea of carrying them out in good faith, the measure containing the provision would sweep the protection system out of existence inside of two years. It would do so by breaking up all interchange of foreign commodities, of stimulating our productive capacity to an abnormal degree, then limiting it to a home market unable to consume one-half its yield. If I were a crazy free trader and wanted to destroy the present industrial fabrics of the United States I would accept this platform as the shortest cut to what I wanted. It is because I am not, it is because I am a conservative man who loves his country, and all classes in it, and all parts of it, that I reject this scheme and accept under a kind of protest the Mills bill. Because the Mills bill takes at least one step down from the mountain of war taxes, and takes that step with exceeding caution. It has been a diversion of certain friends and brothers of mine in the Republican press for a long time to make a free-trade man of straw, to invest this man of straw with a sort of extreme opinion, to do it the honor of giving it my name and then pulling it to pieces. It was just so in the old days of African slavery that the term “abolitionist” was applied to every man who resisted the spread of slavery. It is always a favorite method in giving a dog a bad name first to discredit the name christening the dog. Mr. Lincoln, Mr. Chase, Mr. Seward, were no more abolitionists than Mr. Toombs and Wigfall and Mr. Davis; but the fears of the slave owner were kept constantly aroused by this mad-dog cry of abolition, and so slavery w(8 lured to its doom. I sometimes ask myself whetbe.* protection is to be lured to its doom by denouncing every man as a free-trader who simply demands that the collection of revenue from the people shall be limited to the wants of the Government economically administered. That is all that I have ever demanded, and if I have not always been very nice or choice in the expressions I have used to denounce the robberies and the jobberies of this tariff it has not proceeded from any love of destruction, but simply from a habit of telling the truth and calling a spade a spade. With 200 labor papers in the country, of which only one supports Harrison, about a dozen are non-committal, and the rest are for Cleveland, there are still Republican papers that profess to believe that they represent the American laborer. Thomas H. Bai,i>, proprietor of a corset factory at Aurora, 111., where nearly 1,000 hands are employed, announces himself for Cleveland on the tariff issue. He has never voted anything else but the Republican ticket.

A DAY OF DELIVERANCE.