Democratic Sentinel, Volume 14, Number 41, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 November 1890 — TARIFF LETTERS TO FARMER BROWN. [ARTICLE]

TARIFF LETTERS TO FARMER BROWN.

NO. tt. The Tariff as the Main Issue of To-day. Dear Farmer Brown: You say that you agree with all I have written in my letters thus far, and that you are just as good a tariff reformer as I am, if the principles underlying tariff reform are as I have stated them. But you think it is pretty hard to go back on the Congressman who has represented your district so faithfully for seventeen years, a man, too, who won his military title fighting to save the Union. I need not assure you that I respect your feelings thoroughly in that. But the voting of to-day is on the issues of to-day; and to-day’s duty has to do with the problems of to-day. You have admitted that the McKinley bill is a very bad measure. You laugh over the name Ben Butterworth gave to the so-called agricultural duties when he spoke of them as “tinwhistle duties;” and so I am glad to see you have not been imposed upon in tho slightest by this specious attempt which the Republican leaders have made to mislead you into the belief that protection can increase the prices of your farm products. That bill, you say, is a bad measure. But your Congressman voted for it; and he will certainly have to vote on tariff measures in the next Con gress, for you may rest assured that the tariff is not “settled for ten years at least. ” The only important question, therefore, which you have now to decide is whether you want him to vote again as he did on the McKinley bill. A vote for your Congressman is a vote of confidence In tho McKinley bill. You cannot give that vote; that “cuss word” you used about the “McKinley prices” convinces me you cannot. But cast your vote for Congressman A., and let the tens of thousands of other voters who feel as you do vote the same way. What is the result? A Congress of high protectionists is re-elected; they assembl&aJrWashington convinced that men like you want high protection and are willing to pay for it. When tariff-making time comes around again—as come it will—they will once more “revise the tariff upward” as they have just done. No, sir; you have no right to let your private good-will toward Congressman

A., nor your admiration for his splendid war record, turn you aside from your duty of to-day. The suffrage is a public trust You dare not place men above measures. You t'arc not cast your ballot upon issues that wore fought out a quarter of a century ago, and leave the issues of to-day to take care of themselvs. Does it not strike you as a little amusing that you should still find yourself voting as if the question before the people were whether the men who fought at Gettysburg, at Spottsylvania, at Cold Harbor were brave men? Of course they were. Congressman A. bears the scar of a wound received, I believe, at Antietam. All honor to him, and a pension, too, if you will; but to-day the question is whether the great toiling masses are to have their wants satisfied with a less amount of labor. To-day for to-day! That is the watchword of all reform. Let the dead past bury its dead, and let its holy memories be consecrated. But new times bring new measures, new responsibilities, and if the men of the past forget this and ask us to stand still with them, we have only to brush past them and leave them to their contemplations. The tariff question is but the form in which the old question comes to us which has always existed in every government on the face of the earth, the question whether the governing power shall be used for the benefit of rich and influential men or whether it shall b« used for the whole people. It is the classes against the masses. The tariff issue to-day is whether we shall have enrichment for the few or simple comfort for the many. It is “money against manhood;” it is whether every man, however poor or humble, shall have equal rights before the law; it is whether toil shall reap its full reward, or whether a portion of every man’s labor, every woman’s labor, shall be turned aside to swell the dividends or the bank accounts of men who have never felt the struggle for existence. It is a contest between justice and equality on the one hand and oppression and monopoly on the other. It is an issue between progress and oldfogyism. How so? In this way: The great cheapening process now going on in every department of Industry marks the progress of man in his contest for supremacy Over nature. New inventions have put into our hands the power to accomplish tenfold more in many lines than our fathers could. The result is that this labor-saving machinery has made everything cheaper. Nowhere is this gain more striking than in transportation, both on land and sea. Steam has enabled us to distribute the good things of life with less than a hundredth part of the labor and expense that we expended in that way when you were born. Cheap production, cheap transportation— those are the great achievements which the cunning of man has wrought out. The greater the cheapness the greater the progress. But I. say that the issue is one between this progress and old-fogy-ism. In this way ,thc leaders of the Republican party ate to-day trying to convince the American ' people that cheapness is not to be desired, that things can be too cheap. President Harrison, Maj. McKinley, J. C. Burrows, Cabot Lodge, and other leaders have entered upon the hopeless task of proving to us that it is best that we buy dear. I say hopeless, for they will be unable to persuade any large part of us to accept such nonsense. When we accept it the only reasonable thing left to us is to burn or break up all our labor-saving machinery, tear up our railroads, and sink our steam engines in the bottom of the sea.

As soon as these eminent gentlemen lay down the proposition that cheapness is not good, they at once set their faces against human progress and have become old-fo-gies. In resisting cheapness they set themselves against foreign trade, and are trying, in so far, to make our country what China was a half century ago, before she opened her ports to the great world. Great heavens! Have we come to this? This cheapness which the world has achieved is in a large part duo to more easy and rapid transportation, through which exchange of goods is facilitated; and exchange again is but one part in the process of making things cheaper. Men exchange one thing for another only because they value that other thing more than what they give to get it. Every schoolboy knows this when he swaps his first jack-knife. But the Republican party sets its face against foreign trade, or exchanges, while the only reason that such trade can exist is the fact that our own free American people—you and I among them—want certain foreign commodities. We decide that we can get those commodities with least labor by a swap, by what Mr. Blaine calls “friendly barter;” we want to make such a swap and set out to do so But here the Republican party steps in and says: “No, it cannot be done; labor more and get your goods at home.” And I stick to it that the Republican party is an old fogy! One word in conclusion. Do not be misled by plausible appeals to vote “for the general interests of the country. ” The question for you is, what are your interests? When every man has decided the question of protection in this way, and has cast his vote for the interests of himself and family, do you not see that the average interests of the country are arrived at when the votes are counted. But once let the protectionists befog the issue by specious talk about the “general interests of the country,” which are nearly always somebody vise’s interests, and where will you land? Will you not have to study every other man’s business in order tc find out what the “general interests of the country” are? But you are not capable—no man living is capable—of making such a study of the people’s interests. The most we can do is to study the tariff as it affects our own interests—not out of pure selfishness; but because in t’ais way alone can the “general interests of the country” be determined. The votes of all cast in that spirit will show what these general interests are. There is no other way to tell what those interests are. The only way to get tariff reform is to vote tariff reform; and I shall trust you to vote it as low aryou can get it, Yours truly, Richard Knox The country knows now why McKinley put the duties in tne tariff bill so high. He explains the matter himself when he says: “Cheap! I never liked the word!” Of course you did not, and hence the “McKinley prices.” A practical man says he is never troubled with “undefined longings;” it is clearly defined shortnesses which worry him.