Democratic Sentinel, Volume 14, Number 20, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 June 1890 — INJURES ALL CLASSES. [ARTICLE]

INJURES ALL CLASSES.

FRANKLIN MACVEAGH, OF CHICAGO, ON THE TARIFF. The Wealthy Wholesale Grocer Gives His Views on the “Protective” Policy of the Republican Z'arty—An Open Letter to Western MerchantsThe following letter from Franklin MacVeaah, for twenty-five years one of the leading wholesale grocers of Chicago, 'will be read with interest by merchants throughout the West, inasmuch as he has never been in politics, never held an office and never was a candidate for one, but discusses the tariff question from the standpoint of a business man: The lime has at last come when the Western merchant —whether a wholesale merchant or a retail merchant—is pecuniarily involved in the tariff question. Until now he has felt no pecuniary interest in it; but henceforth he must recognize himself as an important sufferer from the burdens of the tariff and as one of the victims of its oppressions. He has considered himself an outsider. He has thought that he could afford to take any view of tariff reform that suited his fancy, and to subordinate this view, if he pleased, to any other political fancy, and especially to his partisan prejudices. He has felt at full liberty to prefer political associations to the exclusion of tariff .reform notions ; and if he choose, to go back and rake up the issues of the civil war and rest his vote upon these, and to be perfectly indifferent to the cruel exactions of our excessive tariff. All this he felt he could afford to do, notwithstanding many other pockets were involved, because his pocket was not involved. But the inevitable has overtaken him. The hour is at hand when he must rank himself with the farmer and the workingman, making a third in a trio of tribute bearers. That he has had little suspicion of this is but a part of that public blindness which has so long delayed the emancipation of the-people. High protection has itself been protected by this blindness of the people, while tariff reform has been handicapped by it from the start. It has grown up because the burdens of the protective system are indirect and disguised, and, therefore, if the couutry is rapidly developing and universally prosperous, pass unfelt, and sonsequently unresented. Only those who study political questions apart from personal considerations see burdens that are not personally felt. Meanwhile the protectea classes receive iirectly and constantly the benefits which correspond with these burdens, and have accordingly a lively sense of pecuniary interests to iefend. These interests they have defended persistently and energetically. The defense nas aeen organized, powerful and sleepless, as becomes tne defense of pecuniary privileges so jreat and so vividly realized. This until now has made the contest between high protection and tariff reform an unequal snu. The situation is, however, rapidly changing. Tne burdened classes are beginning to realize their burdens. The tribute-payers are beginning to feel the payment of their tributes. Tney will sooner or later feel also the personal humiliation of tribute-paying. The laboring men are also getting their attention fixed upon the a ums they are paying for somebody else’s projection, and are already being counted for tariff reform. The farmers, too, at last are being .meed to see that their prosperity is diminishing, and are consequently beginning to ask why. When they shall ask why with the earnestness which is fast growing out of their diminishing prosperity, and perceive, as they surely will, that but one reply is possible, farewell to the privileges of our protected classes. The protected classes will no longer have mere quiet reformers to deal with then, but an aroused force, about which they can profitably ask the railroads of the West. They will be sorry then that they did not listen to the mild protests of the disinterested period, since, instead of political persuasion, they will have to face political force, and, perhaps, political fury. For to take tne place of the disinterested period when tariff i a form is urged upon purely scientific grounds there is coming in an interested period, when oppressed communities will hotly contend for their rights. The battle is to be between two parties, both pecuniarily interested. The advantage will be with the greater number, and the protected classes are the few. As a result of the new light that is breaking upon the victims of high and higher protection, I believe an awakening of the wholesale merchants and retail merchants is at hand. The merchants have to pay the regular bounties on all they individually consume like the other consumers ; and as they are not all superfluously rich, a great many of them will get tired or doing this, as everybody else is getting tired. But this is not where their shoe will really pinch. The serious trouble at hand for the Western merchant lies in the diminishing ability of .the farmer to buy the merchant’s wares. The farmer is the chief customer of the merchant ; and the prosperity of the merchant is bound up with the prosperity of the farmer. When the farmer’s surplus is cut down his buying power goes with it. Now, the farmer's profits have been diminishing for some time, and they have at last reached the point where in average communities he is running behind. He has but one thing to do, and that is to reduce his scale of living. This result has long been inevitable. The farmer's prices have bean going down because he has to meet the competition of the world, and cannot possibly avoid doing so, while on the other hand he must buy of our protcctsd classes, or at their dictation, and pay immensely more for all he consumes than he would pay if the Government would let him buy as he sells—under the competition of the world. As long as the farmers were inaking money freely it did not matter to the merchants, nor for some time after, because the farmers at first took to running into debt and mortgaging their farms or moving further west, thinking that the bad weather would pass over, as is shown by the abandoned farms of the East and the increased farm mortgages of the West. But that could not go on forever; and the time is now upon us when the farmer is compelled to reduce his expenses and his scale of living. He must cut his coat according to his cloth. This would be very unfortunate for our civilization and would seriously tell upon it, if it should last. But it is immediately unfortunate for the Western merchants, wholesale and retail, all of whom depend either directly or indirectly ripen the purchasing power of the farmer. Therefore I say that the merchant has become an interested party in the tariff question, and must take his part in the movement for reform. He must give his time and money to reform, as the protected classes give theirs to resist reform, ior he has certainly and somewhat suddenly became a party to the fight.

FRANKLIN MACVEAGH.