Democratic Sentinel, Volume 13, Number 28, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 August 1889 — ALL FOR TARIFF REFORM. [ARTICLE]

ALL FOR TARIFF REFORM.

A Huge Gathering at Bloomfield. SENATOR VOORHEES SPEAKS. A Masterly Arraignment of the Party of Protection and Monopoly. About ten thousand people were in attendance at the Tariff Befoim picnic held at Bioomfield Saturday. Andrew Humphrey, chairman, introduced Senator Voorhees, who was greeted with a storm of a ’ n'ao.'T'. The mnotdr ETioke for one hour and fifty minutes, fairly holding i.i audience spell-bound. In substance he said:

“A government that taxes one class of its citizens to enrich another class, does not deserve to xist.cn the face of the earth, and will not lung exist unless the laboring, producing people consent to become slaves. We are traveling fast toward that condition, and in many respects we have reached it. “Forty years ago but one,man in the United States was supposed to be worth $5,000 000. He was J ohn Jacob Astor. Now tnere are thousands worth more than that sum; a large number worth more than $30,000,000, and many worth. m<«re than $100,000,000. The owners of these vast fortunes do n) physical work; they contrive, they scheme, they legislate all their work on to you. You labor, toil, sweat and groan. You eat your bread in the sweat of your faces, but the troubl ; is the millionaires eat their bread also in the sweat of your faces, not in the swear of your own. It is from your swear and toil also that they build their gilded and more than royal palaces, and furnish them with more than oriental splendor, luxury and magaigcence. You pay for all. It is the old, old story which has. been enacted in every age and clirm by caste, privilege and protected aristocracy feeding and flourishing at the hands of the toiling masses. It is the old and infamous claim that in all countries and amongst all races from the beginning of human history a titled and privileged few are rightfully born, booted and spurred to mould .nd rid - the bridled and saddled, burthen/ bearing, tax-paying, sun-burnt, home-spun millions.

“That claim is here in our midst now witn all its worst and most brutal Qirogance. A little while ago it was like the storm-cloud when it first appears—no large than a man’s hand. Now it dart ens the whole heavens and 1 ■ ’r gloom and terror to f. im; ... ishei firesides of laboring man, women and children from one ocean to the other. tYou have heard cf the perilous ridge of battle. The free institutions of this government, and all your rights to equality and protection from spo - liation and plunder bv law, are this hour on the perilous ridge where the line is drawn between a government of a people and open, avowed plutocracy, a government by the naked power of money, a government by the dukes, earls ana lords of enormous estates, and vast millions. The hour has almost struck for such a government to be proclaimed. The signs of its near approach are on all sides, and as plain to the thinking mind as the stars of a clear night to the naked eye. The money power has crept into the ballot-box, and its leprous taint is rapidly spreading through every branch of the public service- An apple may leok fair and enticing on its stem in the orchard, :but if then is a canker worm at its core it is only a ques« tion of time when it will shrivel, wilt and fall to the ground in decay and rottanuess. There is no outward change in the form ani structure of our beautiful and glorious government as yet, but when the largest contributors to corruption funds get the highest

official positions, when men advocate and urge the purchase of voters in “blocks of five,” and lost' no caste in the councils of their party; and when partisan reasons dictate dishonest rulings in the courts, you may be sure that a canker worm is at th a core, and that the fruit brought forth by the wisdom and blood of your fathers is perishing in your very sight. “Money piled up mountain high in the hands of monopolies, corpoand under'the control of those who do not believe in the principles of self-government or the rule of the plain people is indeed at this crisis of American history tin root of all evil, and it will destroy the American republic from turret to foundation-stone unless the people in their might and power, while it is not yet too late, arise and take the satanic spir’t of plutocracy by the throat, strangle it to death, and deliver the country from its dangerous p esence and accursed power.

‘ The present high| protective tariff is simply a huge, complicate e! far-reaching, close-searching, insatiate, grasping and oppressive instrumentality of the plutocracy for the consolidation of wealth and the power of wealth in the hands of the f«v at the expense ot the many; it is a vast machine, pat in motion I y unjust and dishonest laws, to take nard-ea. ned money out of your pockets, and place it to the credit of those who toil not, neither do they spin, but who, In bank accounts end dazzling riches, outshine Solomon in his greatest glory. Th. war was the opportunity for the beginning of the me ney power, and the establishment of the present tariff was one of its first movements. Under the plea of military necessity the average duties on all goods, wares and* merchandise imported into this country for sale were more than doubled by the Morrill tariff, and you have had these increased rates to pay ever since. If any one shout i come into your midst saying the importer or the merchant who sells to you, or any one else except yourselves pays the duty on the ar.ide you buy, don't fail ic remind him that the three new insane asylums ia Indiana are about finished and that there j.s room in one of them for him,but no loom before an intelligent people. What a marvellous feat in legislation ij would be if we could m.d.e citizens of foreign counu : i p;.y our taxes and furnish the resources for the su >■ or; of i our governmimt! On the contrary, thetariff is a system of ation by-which the wmits of man!dnd are levied on, and ci.-s o" toll is taken on the things most' vital to the existence of the human race. If there was no consumer for an article, that article would never be manufactured, imported or sold. There would be no tax gathered in from that source; but if a consumer comes forward, the article is furnished with a tax, in other words, the duty charged in, and the consumer, of course, pays for it. “The system thus referred to is generally called indirect taxation. When taxes are laid upon any article that is produced by man, tfiat tax is not paid finally by the person who pays it in the first insU ance, by the manufacturer, the imp rter, or other person from whom the government collects it. That person sets out as a tax collector, and whatever he pays to the government he collects from his customer with a profit. From this it follows that every tax of «his kind, tax laid by the tariff, every tax laid by the internal revenue law, and every species of tax which is laid upon personal property, such as chairs, tables, clothing or food, is paid by the consumer, by the person who finally and ia the last instance uses that property and does not attempt to sell it to another. So long as one sells such property he does not pay the tax; he collects it from the person who buys from him. “You farmers of Greene county theres c re stood an average increase

of taxation on all you bought end consumed of over 100 per eMi\ during the war, and yo .i pail it without murmur or complaint while armies were in the field. Your sons were at the front equally representing the households of both political parties, and you did not then stop to consider the cost,, nor do you now, when mouev is needed for those who faced death to uphold the flag and preserve the Union. It is true that those who were engaged in establishing ajplutocracy, as Thaddeus Stevens even then styled it, who were shav* ing the securities of the govern ment at 50 cents on the do’lar, who were cutting government bonds in two in the middle and paying half their face into the treasury, and who were laying the foundations of that colossal fraud and robbery, now known as the high protective tariff; it is true that some ot these people, their heirs or assigns never saw a tented field. They worsh ■ ipe 1 mammon and had no room in their sordid hearts for love of country, yet you and the millions like you all over the land not only filled up the armies and the navy, but yen likewise paid them every dollar they ever received. You did not stop to cry out on the injustice you suffered as long as the dire emergency was on the government, bi t what shall be said of » man or party who now’, aftei twenty-four y-ars of peace opposes a single dollar’s reduction of taxes laid on the absolute and su - preme necessities of life as an extreme war measure, and described as such at the time by its advocates ?

“But republican leaders claim that their party has already made large reductions of taxation. Not a dollar for the relief of the farmer, the mechanic, or the wage-worker, but enormous reductions have taken place in behalf of the rich and powerful. On a former occasion, in speaking of the reeord of the leaders of he republican party on the subject of tariffstax reduction I made the following statement: “Their hearts were with the rich; their concern was for the lords of millions; they were distressed that the amassed capital of the country should be called on to meet any part of the expenses of the government, and they rushed to the rest ue of the monopolist, the usurer,, the money-charger, such as e scourged out of the temple by iur blessed Savior nearly 1,900 ye - if- ago. On such as these their love was lavished. In 1869, as I have alre dy shown, they swept away the taxes on the manufacturer and still left him his compensatory tariff duties. During the years 1.872 and 1873 that jus* and righteou; tax, the tax on incomes, wis wiped out, and I am glad to remember that 1 voted in the house against its repeal From this source of revenue, better able than any other in the world, the government realized, m a period of ten years, over $346,000,000, aid to that extent the burdens of labor were lightened. “Such a spectacle, however, was galling to the instincts of the repnbhcai party ard at war with its purpose to establish a moneyed eligarchy devouring the taxes of the people and paying none itself. The income tax was therefore thrown overboard and all the holders et corpulent incomes from the dividends of banks and other powerful corporations were that much richer and you were that much peorer. Bonds and coupons, bank stocks, and railroad profits, insurance companies, and express com panies, together with every other great money-gathering corporation in the United. States were made exempt from the tax-gatherers’ demands, while the tax on your shirt and on your wife’s calico dress and flannel petticoat remained the same, or were increased. Salaried government officials, receiving from S6OO to $25,000 a yeir, including the were released from the income tax, while you were released from nothing at all, and were required to pay on eve-

rything. The heavy bank accounts of speculators, brokers, incorporated manufactories, and of greedy, grasping syndicates, were made sacred from any contribution to the payment of government expenses, while there was no remission of tariff taxation on the farmers-’ horse shoes, his trace chains, his wagon tires, his farming implements, nor on his wears ing apparel and outfit for housekeeping. But the reduction of taxest for the benefit of iha wealthy and flavored cUssas did w t stop eveufii this paint. Every vestige of thfei once widespread pioce s of internal taxation on specified article and occupations has lon ~ i. icdisappeared, and nothing i. .a remains of that system except the levy on distilled spirits, fermented liquors, tobacco and oleoi mrga „ rine. “No longe>* a goyernmoi tax falls on brokers, billiard rooms, steamboats, banks fund bankers ships, railroads, telegraph companies, operas, circuses ind museums, letter es and lottery dealers, bank checks, bank depose its, gift enterprises, diamond an 1 plate of sold gold and silver n tables of luxury nnd self-indulg ence. The trickling stre ms of revenue once flowing from these and other numerous similar sour* cesare now all dried up, and the farmer, the mechanic and the wage worker must meet the demands of the government without aid In the recent great tariff debate in the house of representatives the leaders of the republican party boasted that since the war they had abolished taxes to the amount < f $360,000,000; but not one dollar dir they show had been removed from the necessaries of life. They simply boasted of their crime against labor, and gloried in their shame.’ * “A reduction of taxation, however; on the prime necessities of life need never be expected at the hands of the ;epublicau party. Ils leaders are compete a to ybe , the robber barons who plunder’ the homes the farms, the workshops of the people, and are thus enabled to contribute hbe’ , al!y of their ill-gotten wealth to the corruption of the ballot box and the success of the republic n party. During the last session of congress a bill for the revision of the tariff was urged upon the country by the leaders of that party, and the duties were increased in every schedule it contained, and especially on all woolen poods, iron and steel. “The'dispairiics from England tell us that a bill introduced in parliament to give the prince of Wales about, two hundred thousand dollars to enable hi n properly to dower his daughter about to be married has created marked opposition. That is a mere trifle compared to the largesses, the subsidies, the donations, and thestu-' pendous tributes now paid by you, and the other laboring ople of the United States, to ine huge, bloated parasites which our vicious system of tariff has fastened on you, on your wives, on your children, on your man servant, and on your maid servant, on your ox, on your ass, an on everything that is within your gates. There is a man by the name of Carnegie, and with him I might name perhaps a thousand others, who are each drawing from over taxed, poorly fed and scantily clothed labor every year five times as much as it is proposed to give to the prince es Wales, and every dollar of it a naked gratuity, something for nothing to the American monopolist, ascomnletely as the parliamentary grant will be to the worthless royalty of Eng land. The time is rapidly ap proaching when the people will either overthrow and wipe out such crimes con. mitted by their governments or they will themselves be enslaved in name as well Hs in fact.

“Is there a man of intelligence and candor in the United States t >- day who will now in the light, or rather in darkness, of surrounding circumstances claim for the present tariff thaf it protects the American laborer? The appalling falsehoods on this point with which the republican press ard leadeis affronted heaven and earth in the campaign of last year have all turned to scourges, thongs and whipcords in the hands of honest people with which to lash naked officials through the world. The tarmers were promised remunerative prices for what they had to sell, and the day laborer living wages for his work. More than one»third of the great states of Indiana, Ohio, Illinois and Michigan are under mortgage for debt, and the farmers of t ese four states will average an indebtedness in each of them of mor* than 8100,000,000 to foreign loan associations. It is a statistical fact that tiie farmer, year in and year out, can never exceed a profit of more than 3 per cent., and much oftener makes far less. Under a republican tariff and system of finance deigned te rob him he is forced to borrew at from 4 to 8 per cent. How he, can get rich in this way can only be explained by those who contend that the more you tax men, women and children, the wealthier and more prosperous they become. As to the wage-worker in the manufactories of the country, and for whom the blessings of a high protective tariff were more especially invoked, it is only necessary for you to lift upyour eyes and behold how the fake and lying prophets of Baal have been overthrown and and confounded.

“The whole lard is filled with laborers out of employment and facing starvation with their wives and children. Last summer and fall they were promised a j aradise for the laborer in the event of the success of the republican party; dow there is not a state in the Union in wh’ch the appeal for work and the cry for bread are not constantly heard from these who were milled into the support of fraud and monopoly under the guise of protection. The future will show whether this hard experi:Dce blings wisdom, or whether the laborer is doomed to a bondage more helpless and hopeless than once prevailed on the cotton plantations of the South. The protection of a tariff paid, not for revenue, but for protection, in itself is a fraud, a cheat, a sham, and an oppression on every labor intercut in the United States.” Mr. Voorhees concluded by urging a more thorough org-mizuti >. -u e eery county in the . tate fcr tariff reform. ‘‘There is no mid die ground on this question. Once the issue was a tariff for r< venue with incidental protection; now the issue presented by the republican party is protection for monopolies, trusts ind combines, whether revenue is needed or not. We have an enormous surplus of revenue iakeu from your pockets and now in th > treasury. But there never c.in be a surplus of protection li. tn. .“«timHtioa of the Carnegies and his kind. Some say the battle ou the tariff was lost by the democratic party in the last campaign. On die contrary, the bat He has just begun and will be lo't out uiuii the right shall prevail or until w« know the worst. But I do not doubt the decision of sh teople. , The natural rigl,ts< f li a , ire involve.! in this contest and t‘ spirit of oppression will at he crushed, the hand of the legalized robber will be paralyzed, iniquitous legislation will'| ;e vi and the American people ,>r t.d forth emancipated liom the bondage of their presect cruel, urasp ing and odious taskinastere. ‘The cause of justiee e. every man to do his duty. (Other speeches on Bth page.) Cheap excursion to Dayton, ; Thursday, August Bth.' T. J. McCoy, E. P. Honan, Vai. Seib, W. B. Austin and e Hollingsworth, with their ladies, picnicked at Cedar Lak - , h I day. Soldiers’Home excursion,Thursday August Bth. Very chea p tickets good for five days, giving an excellent opportunity for visiting Cincinnati, Hamilton, Xen.a and other Ohio towns,

On last Saturday eveninig the I sad, but not unlooked for, intelligence circulated through Ressek aer that Archibald Purcupile had breathed his last. For many years he had been a resident of this this, and here he reared a large family. Prominent in mercantile pursuits, he had an extensive ac« quaintance and established a lasting friendship with all. For forty years or more he had been a member in high standing of the Masonic fraternity, took great interest m and devoted much time to the study of its chershed teach*' ings which he strove to adapt to his daily walk in life, and in his association with his fellow men. Ihe f uneral services were Lelo in the Presbyterian church Mon** day afternoon, Revs. Tressler, McGuire andDwiggms officiating. The funeral cortege which followed the remains to the tomb was one of the largest ever witnessed in this locality and comprised Prairie Lodge, F. & -A. M., Eastern Star Chapter O. E. S. and a large concourse of citizens. The cornet band discoursed appropriate music, and at the grave the ceremonies were concluded with the solemn and impressive rites of the Masonic Order. jMr. and Mrs. Zimri (Purcupile) 1) wiggins, and Mrs, Newell, of Chicago, Mis. John Purcupils and son, of Neb., Frank Purcupile, of Brooklyn, N. Y., Jne. Jackson r <nd wife, of Logansport, Henry Downof Goodland, Dick Howe, of Franklin, Neb., and Mrs. Samuel Smith, of Fowler, were present. John Purcupile, of Nebraska, and Mr. and Mrs. John Free-m-n, of Oxford, arrived Monday evening, too late for the funeral.

Thousands of employes in the “protected n oke industries” of Pennsylvani i have gone out ou a st ike for living wages this week. It seems the “tariff” is not proof against the cravings es hungar.

The Indianapolis. Sentinel Co. is offering as a premium wi’h the Indiana State Sentinel, a magnificent engraving of Munkacy’s “Christ before Pilate,” Rosa Bonheur’s “Horse Fair” and the “Lion?. at Home,” by the same artist. Snbscrib?rs can obtain any one of these by paying a nominal sum to cover the cost of putting up and forwarding the picture. The engravings are readily spiel at sl, but • t is proposed to ask an advance of little more than one-tenth of that amount over the regular subscription price lor the weekly Sentinel and the picture. The Sentinel Co. will send any one of the pictures i >new subscribers, r old subscribers renewing their subscriptions, ■ ■■ die Aeekly year for 81.15. ’ ! i’y 15c. to cover express ch-- q<’s .-. jib New York, postage, wrapper, clerical work and other ' '■ ’ ' The picture is given free. It is a offer.

< I pins 1 cent per dozen; I-or. ca; pet tacks 1 cent per paper; fi . ne-pint tin cups for 10 cents; pmri buttons 5 cents per dozer, -v uth 10 cents; silk mitts 10 cents, worth 25, and a great variety of 5 and 19 cent counter goods - t the Chicago Bargain House. Loosed Red Clover Pills Cure Sick Headache, Dys; epsia, Indigesr »n, t; n>biipation. 25c per Box, 5 boxps for sl. For sale by Long & Eger.

have become very cheap in front of some of the stores 1 JpU’ * ■ut rhe pioprietor of the ■ ’ ; > .'argr.in House should have the credit.

<M-' - ’ SOUND LEGAL OPINION. "Liih e: icg ?J-.iJ)dav, Ssq, (’ouo '..V Gt'y ■ county, Texas, says: '■E >v' '!scd E:»,- t -rrie Bitters with mostiia; My brother was also Vt ■" ■>’ i'i: Malarial Fvvef asd .Tuiiedn.-, but ms cured t y timely use of this medicine Am sati fled Electric Bitters saved his life.” Mr D I Wi’coxson, of Horse Cave, Ky.. .s ■. like testimony, sayiog: rie pos'iiveiy believes ne would have di d h i-, it not been for Electric Bitters This great i> >no tv will w-<rd off, as well as cure all Malarial-Diseoses, afid for a I ki ’oev, Liver and Stomac.:i stands unequaled. si)_and $1 >ll ~F B Meyer’s 6 1 I O', k ont for bargains at Priest <t Pexton s. Another car load of Shirting, Muslins, Tinware, Clothespins, Notions, <fcu., &c., just received at the Chicago Bargain House.

A good suit of clothes may now be had at R. Fendig’s for 84, never before sold for less thans6.so. .