Democratic Sentinel, Volume 13, Number 37, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 October 1889 — VOORHEES’ SPEECH —AT THETARIFF REFORM MEETIHG, [ARTICLE]

VOORHEES’ SPEECH —AT THE — TARIFF REFORM MEETIHG,

Scottsburg, Ind, Sept. 21J1889. My Fellow-Citizens —I once heard a very en_ i oent man in public life remark then, -lue highest compdmenthe could pay to an audience was in the careful preparation of what he had to say, aud 1 have, to some extent at ’east, acted on his suggestion at this time. I also feel it due to the enterprising representatives of the press to relieve them in advance of all responsibility for arty mistakes which may occur in my remarks. It is an adui tiona.l labor, but at times, i. on v. der certain circumstances, it is best for a public speaker to report for himselt if he can.

The only authority for tariff t r h *}.■!•:. i erchuiidise imported into this country tor euie, and by which their price to the consumer is increased, to that extent, is to be found in the eig tb section of the first article of tne constitution, wherein, among other enumerated powers, it is declared that “the congress sliail have power to lav and collect taxes, duties, im* posts and excis js. ” This is a provision solely for the financial support of the government, and it m no sense warrants class legislation, or authorizes congress to protect one industry at the expense of another, or to feed monopolists, usurers, trusts and powerful manufacturing combinations x out of the daily labor of your hands. Our present system of tariff has long since ceased to be witMn the plain and well known meaning of this clause of the constitution. A tariff in the United Stages can omy be in harmony with chat great instrument while it remains a measure for revenue. It is constitutional only as a method for collecting a sufficient sum of money, and not a dollar more, with which to meet the actual expenses of the government. When it becomes a means, ~ vast, elaborate, and intricate machine, designed to take the labor of one man and give it to another without compensation; to tax the workingmen, women, and children of the whole country, and to turn the proceeds, not into the treasury already too full, but Lto th°> pros tected and bloated pockets of the idle, privileged aristocracy of ills gotten wealth, then it is as foreign to the intent, the purpose, and the powers of the constitution as the daily and nightly avoeations of the professional pickpocket, the burglar, or the high way man.

The original purpose of ’This government was to require from its citizens ; .ot a dollar in taxes beyond what is needed for ite economical administration. The polic / of the republican party on the con trary is now, and has been for many years, to wring 85 from your wants ,-jia -vGEsitiCE by a high, pi tectiye tariff, azul bile putting one of it into the treasury give the other four to those whom I choose to designate as the Carnegies, the oppressors of labor, tho fat rob - bers of the farmer, the mechanic, and the wage-worker. This is the kind of pro+ection dictated by the millionaires, and through their servile agent, the republican party, plaeed on our statute books, there to blight the prosperity of the people, and to disgrace the Amer ican republic before God and man. When our fathers created this government they dedicated it to liberty and to equality before the law, and yet you stand here to-day, industrious, patristic, noble Christian men and women of Indiana, no more on an equality in rights or in burdens with the protected monopolists of this country than were the slaves of the South thirty years ago with their owners and masters. Those who abuse me most for this statement know that it is absolutely true. I The orjgans of unholy avarice and legalized greed well know that

in the collection of an internal revenue of, say $200,000,000, which goes into the U. 8. treasury under the tariff, not less than $600,000,s 000 inures to the swollen cofFers of the manufacturing monopolists, by reason of the high prices they are protected in charging up to you, and to all the laboring, producing classes of the whole land. It is this monstrous p i version of the powers of the government, this reaction against the principles of equal and justioe to all, an * exclusive privileges to none, which is now so keenly and powerfully incensing the public mind, and arousing, not only the opposition, but the determined resentment of

honest, thinking pnople. The action of the republican national convention at Chicago last year has also largely aided to awaken, alarm and inflame public indignation in this great question. While the leaders of the republican party have enacted laws for protection independent of the necessity for revenue ever since the passage of the Morrill tariff in March, 1861, yet they never dared to avow such a principle of plunder until they w. re forced to no so by the jobber barons who surrounded and nated the Chicago convention 1888. It was only in the last year of the first centurj of our exist" ence as a government under the constitution that any political party or convention of men was found with sufficient hardihood, brazen audacity, and lust of gain to declare in favor of continuing and in fact increasing tariff taxation on all the most vital commodities or

life, not as a measure of revenue for the support of the government, but as a measure for the still further enrichment of a mon- »yed aristocracy out of your daily toil. Such an atrocious doctrine as this •. annot fail to arrest tht attention and deeply move the American people. It changes the tariff issues of the last hundred years as : resented and discussed in American politics. •It leaves no room for conservative opposition to such a lawless demand. The hail of the robber on the highway to stand and deliver admits only of heroic arguments in reply. lam not now for the first time defining my position on this point, and! am repeating rather than stating something uew. On the floor of the senato, and in the hearing of the republican leaders, I spoke as tallows on December 19, 1 88:

“For the first time in American history the mask of the manufacturer is thrown aside and all disguise abandoned. rU has heretofore at leas* pretended that all the protection he needed and asked could be secured as an incident to a purely revenue trail!. The greatest minds ever engaged in the conduct of our public affairs have willingly conceded all the incidental protection which wise legislation framed for the purpose of revenue could afford to the do-

mes'ic manufacturer. The protection, however, now boldly demanded is the enormous tribute which the consumer is compelled to pay directly to the monopolist in manufacture and in trade, no part of which ever reaches the treasury of the government at all. This tribute exacted for the sake of protection per se, and with no reference to revenue, is the increased price which high rates of duty, keeping foreign imports from our shores, enables the mans ufaeturer to put on his goods without fear of foreign cempetit on. This is the naked and avowed plunder of one class of American citizens f r the sole benefit and enrichment of another and it will not long be borne. ”

There was no answer th< n from the ablest leaders of the republican party, looking on and listening as they were; there will be no answer now. There will be slander and pbuse, but the facts 1 present can no more be answereaby the monopolists and their organs than the thief taken in the act can make answer for the stolen goods in his hands.

A few weeks ago I submitted some observations at Bloomfield •on the subject of a tariff tor plunder and not for revenue, am a vehement torrent of inconsistent and incoherent falsehoods, contradicting each other, has assailed me eversinee. The outcries of the Dampered looters, and legalised financial brigands is sweet music to every earnest man who is enlistted for their overthrow, and the more they rave the more certain we are that our fire is reaching their strongholds. In my remarks at Bloomfield I pointed pit,

amongst other iniquities, theptax now collected on every one of the various articles of woolen gppds and woolen vear, fnm a map's overco t to his stockings, and from a woman’s shawl to her from the big bed-clothes of people to .the soft cradle bWlftot for the new-born baby, and impaired how any rational head of a household could support a party which took his money as a tax on such articles anl give it to the manufacturer. In answer to this question certain stipendiary orjaps of dishDnest lawe and dishonest .avarice —such as the Journal at Indianapolis, the Press at Philaq&lphia, and others of like

declared with angry emphasis that good woolen clothing, and woolen goods generally, can be purchased cheaper in this country than in any other country in the world, and then proceeded to denounce me for making appeals to the passions and ignorance of my hearers. 'This may be cited as a fine specimen of incoherent and self answering mendacity, for if the American manutacturer of woolens can put his goods on the market here at a lower rate than the foreigner can his after paying transportation, what possible rea son can exist in any sane mind for high tariff duties, or any duties at all, to keap the foreigner away and to shut off the competition of his cheap priced goods