Democratic Sentinel, Volume 13, Number 18, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 May 1889 — Stands Squarely on the Issue. [ARTICLE]

Stands Squarely on the Issue.

Two reports were submitted by the Committee on ltesolutions of the Kentucky State Democratic Convention hold on Thursday. One—that of the majority—indorsed the national platforms of 1884 and 1888, with especial reference to their tariff declarations; the minority report indorsed previous Democratic platforms in general terms, avoiding any direct mention of the tariff. When a vote was taken, the majority report was adopted almost unanimously. The result in Kentucky is only an indication of a very general conviction that the Democratic party is called upon to make its stand flrmlv upon the principle of tariff leforrn and leave the partisanship or mere expediency to the ltepublicans. Every day is bringing its new evidence of the falsity of the promises made by the press and orators of the now dom mint party before the election of November last, and every day is thus bringing nearer the time when tho people at large, even those who do not look beneath the surface of ovents for economic truth, will become so restivo under existing and undoubted evils, that they will be driven to their own salvation. They were promised a firm and substantial prosperity, such as they bad never before known, upon the one condition that they should elect Benjamin Harison and Levi P. Morion, respectively, to tho Presidency and the Vice Presidency of the United States. The election came, Harrison and Morton were chosen, and tho roosters were not removed from the columns of the organs of that paity before there came dispatches announcing reductions In wages, which were already small, strikes, lockouts, and the all train of miserable consequences which follow in the path of the false and dishonest system of protection, and this dismal succession of industrial disasters has not yet passed a given point. Does any one profess that the conditions of May, 1889, are greatly different from those which surrounded American manufacturing interests during the October preceding? Was there any radical difference in the trade influences of the Monday preceding and the Wednesday following the election? Not at all. The great capitalists who have grown fat by virtue of the iniquitous tariff tax upon the consumer would not hazard the election of men pledged to the system by anv precipitation. Before the election they in the position of the spider, singing its siren song to the fly; after the votes were cast, the fly was in the net, and, spider-like, they proceeded to eat him. Trusts are merely results of the imposition of a tariff which ents off the competition of the outer world, and not a paper can one take up that does not record the organization of some new combination, formed under the shelter of the Bepublican tariff to artificially advance the prices of the necessaries of life and wrongfully crush that honest competition which is the only safety of the producing classes. Four years of wages reduced by the protected barons, and living expenses increased by the vampires of the trusts, will be enough to tire the honest but unthinking men who were deceived into aiding in the election of Harrison. Then the advocacy of tariff reduction will fall upon willing and intelligent ears and the wisdom of the majority of the Kentucky committee will be vindicated.— Detroit Free Press.