Democratic Sentinel, Volume 14, Number 51, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 January 1891 — Page 3

THE FUTURE OF REFORM

♦VIEWS OF CONGRESSMAN WM. M. SPRINGER. 'The Democrat! Will Keep Tariff Reform to the Front—lt Will Be the Winning Issue in ’9B—'The Hopeless Situation of > the Republicans—They Cannot Shift the Issue, and Can Neither Go Forward Nor Backward. Congressman Wm. M. Springer will be t» prominent figure in the new Democratic House. He is already a candidate for Hoeaker, with a show of being elected; ( but whether he is elected or not, his long -and conspicuous service in the Democratic party lends great interest to his views of the outlook for tariff reform at 'this time. He talked recently to a memiber of the New York Reform Club as ■follows: “The Republican politicians of Washington are now trying to divert public .-attention from the principal issue upon which they were repudiated at the November election. They seem to be of the opinion that there is but oneway - open through which success is possible in 1892. Upon the tariff question they have ?beenthoroughly repudiated. They now hope by reviving sectional issues, through .and by means of the force bill and appeals to sectional prejudice, to re-form political issues upon other lines than ♦tariff and taxation! In this they will be as much disappointed as they were over- ■ whelmed by the result of the recent election. The people of the country i have pronounced against taxation of the many for the benefit of the few. They will not give up this issue until it has eventuated in practical legislation in accordance with their demands. > If we were now living under the form of government which prevails in monarchial England, the new Congress would at • once be convened, and the McKinley bill would be immediately repudiated; but under our more conservative we must abide the constitutionaF forms -*required for securing results. “On the tariff question the Republicans can neither go forward nor backward ■with any prospect of bettering their condition. To stand still is con aided defeat; rto move in the other direction offers scarcely less advantage. If they go for- • ward they must rely upon the fulfillment ■ of pledges made before the election, and pending the passage of the McKinley bill, to the effect that while prices of . articles affected by the tariff might be temporarily advanced, yet, ultimately and in the near future, by means of competition, such prices could be greatly ;reduced and articles would be sold ■ cheaper than before the passage of the <bill—thus placing their reliance in the future for a reversal of the popular judgment in November upon a claim »that competition is to come to their relief, and that by the time of the next Presidential election the people will be •in the full enjoyment qf cheap riecessas ries of life secured through competition. 'This hope is a flattering one; it can never be realized. “Competition has already done its perfect work in this country in the matter •of reducing prices. So perfectly has -competition been carried on that combination for the purpose of arresting -competition has been resorted to all .along the line. There is scarcely a manufacturing industry in the United States that is not more or less controlled by some kind of combination for the purpose of limiting the output and regulating tho prices. In some cases this «combination has taken the form of trusts or organized monopolies. These trusts have secured the concentration of :nearly all the capital engaged in a given industry, and by this combination a complete control of the output and prices • has been secured. In other cases a more mild type of combination has been re- : sorted to. In some cases the combination has been secured by means of cor-i-respondence between tho various interests and tacit agreement reached as ■to output and prices, year after year. But, through one form or another, scarcely an industry can be mentioned in which further competition is not prevented or made impossible by the mutual • concurrence of those engaged in the 'business.

•(Those, therefore, who look to competition for a reduction of prices will be deceived. Prices of manufactured articles can only be reduced, while the McKinley bill is in force, by the reduction of wages or by the adoption of improved processes. The latter will come without the tariff; it is 'entirely independent of it. In most lines of industry it would seem that the processes of manufacture were almost perfect at this time; but still we may hope for continued improvement in this direction, although such improvement will scarcely be perceptible in the brief space of ’two years. Lower prices secured by reduction of wages would be attended with greater disaster than if present prices should be maintained and \£ages increased; so that, wherever cheapness :is secured by reduction of wages, the remedy will be worse than the disease—speaking in a political sense, as it will • affect the interests of the Republican party. Hence, it seems conclusive that the Republican party cannot improve its position on the tariff or on taxation by .-adhering to the McKinley bill. “If, however, the leaders of the party should determine to reverse their position, overturn the leadership of Harrison, McKinley, and Reed, and put Mr. Blaine forward with the implied promise •of the repeal of the McKinley bill, the -enlargement of trade, through reciprocity and the bettering of thejr condition by repudiating all that the Republican party has done since it came into power, it will find this latter condition more -hopeless than the former. “President Harrison, in his message to •Congress ‘pointed with pride’ to the fact that there had been, recently, an increase in the prices of agricultural products, such as corn, wheat, etc.; and he •endeavored to convey the impression that such increased price of agricultural products was the result of the McKinley bill. Nothing could be further from the truth. If he had taken pains to examine the reports on the condition of crops, which issued from the Agricultural Department almost simultaneously with his message, he would have found that in Kansas the average yield of corn •per acre was only eleven bushels, whereas it ought to have been thirty. The very fact that there is almost a total failure of the the corn crop in Kansas was one of the reasons which produced ■the political revolution in that State. "The failure or shortness of the corn crop In the great corn belt of the oountry caused scarcity of this product, and -scarcity resulted in higher prices for corn, But the trouble with the fanners was that they had little or no corn to sell, and many of them who had stock to feed became buyer at Use higher rates

which scarcity had produced. The prices of agricultural products are determined entirely by the extent of production, and this is governed by natural causes, not by legislation. “A f|jjlure of crops in this country is regarded by the farmers as the greatest calamity that can befall them. But such failure inevitably results in higher prices of farm products, and therefore the President has cited as an evidence of prosperity that which the farmers themselves regard as a calamity, namely, higher prices resulting from crop failure. There can be no combination among farmers to reduce the output of agricultural products; such combinations are not even desirable. Farmers universally strive for bountiful harvests, the pious ones among them praying as well as laboring for them. They regard a bountiful harvest as essential to their prosperity, notwithstanding the fact that the greater the crop the less will be the price of the products. They are political economists who believe —who realize, in fact—that abundance is wealth, and that scarcity can never tend in that direction. If the next season should be favorable, and large crops of wheat, corn, oats and other products of the farm should be realized, there will be a corresponding depression of prices, and the larger the crop the lower the prices. If such should be the result a year from this time the President in his annual

Chief Robber—Hey! you, recording secretary! here’s a newcomer; it’s a New Year. See if New Years are on the Free List. No? Well, tax him '149 per cent, ad valorem and let him remain for twelve months.— Chicago Herald.

message would—following the lines of his late one—deplore the unfortunate condition of the country brought about by the low prices for farm products caused by abundant harvests. “The Republican leaders cannot nope to divert the attention of the country from the tariff Question whatever they may do, whether they go forward or go backward. The Democratic party has a plain, unmistakable duty to perform; that duty consists in moving steadily onward and pressing the advantage which it has already obtained. It will keep this question before the public until the fruits of victory have been realized, until the McKinley bill has been repealed, and until materials which make profitable manufacture impossible have been relieved from unnecessary burdens, and so cheapened as to not only aid manufacturing but increase profitable production. It will demand larger markets for American products; not only reciprocity with Cuba, South America, and Canada, but freer trade with all the world. “The late election was only tne expression of popular desire; that popular desire has not been accomplished. It may not be fully realized until after the next Presidential election, at which the final and complete victory will be achieved—namely, the election of a President and both branches of Congress, who will carry into effect the popular verdict of last November. During the Fifty-sec-ond Congress the large Democratic majority Will keep this question continually in view. It will not be turned to the right nor to the left; it will not permit side issues of any kind to interfere with this all-absorbing and all-important question. With the advantages already obtained it would be little less than criminal to permit anything to occur which would make impossible ultimate and complete tariff reform. ”

Mabkiage increases a man's modesty, so that after a year or two he can’t summon up enough courage to kiss the woman whose lips in the past were glued to his forhours on a stretch three times a week.

TARIFF VETTERS TO FARMER BROWN.

NO. 18. Dmi a Tariff Restrict Foreign Trade? Dear Farmer Brown: The question which I put at the head of this letter may seem to be an entirely needless one; since most intelligent men, whether protectionists or tariff reformers, are agreed that protection does restrict importation, and most of those accepting this conclusion agree also that the restriction of importation must necessarily, in the long run, restrict exportation. I” say the question may seem a needless one, but when I take up the protectionist journals and see what they are trying to teach the people, and when I read the utterances of their leading men, I cannot regard the question propounded as being unworty of treatment in these letters. Two such eminent protectionists as President Harrison and Maj. McKinley are not agreed as to the simple question whether a tariff diminishes imports. In his speech in the House of Representatives on the 7th of last May, McKinley combated the. opinion of the Democratic minority of the Ways and Means Committee that the proposed tariff bill would not reduce the revenue, saying: “The very instant that you have increased the duties to a fair protective point, putting

ANEW VICTIM FOR THE HIGH TARIFF ROBBERS.

them ahovo the highest revenue point, that very instant you diminish importations, and to that extent diminish the revenue. * This is a very clear and true proposition. Upon it McKinley proceeded to reduce the revenue by increasing taxation, and thus in so far to prevent the people from buying the things which they want. On the other hand, when President Harrison c-ime to write his message to Congress he found that the imports at the port or New York for the first three weeks of November were actually greater than for the corresponding periods In 1889 and in 1888; and he called attention to this singular fact with evident satisfaction as showing that “the prohibitory effect upon importations imputed to the act is not justified. ” Bqt tho President was too hasty in his conclusion that the McKinley law is not reducing importation. Taking as an example the dry goods schedules, in which the increase of duty was relatively much greater than in other parts of the tariff, we find that for the two weeks ending December 24, the imports at New York were only $3,959,338 worth, against £5,376,641 for the corresponding two weeks in 1889, or a difference of $1,417,303. When the President wrote many manufactured goods were still coming in from orders sent off before tho pew tariff law went into ODeration, with the expectation that the goods would be landed before tho expirationof the old law. The goods did not get in in time to avoid the extra McKinley tax, and there was thns no longer any motive to hurry them in. If, however, it should turn out at the end of the fiscal year that our imports have gone on increasing, will this fact prove that the McKinley law has not restricted imports? Our population continued to grow during the four years of the war; can any sane man claim, therefore, that the war did not diminish the population? The thousands who fell on the battlefields were not so many as the children that were born at the same time. Yet we know that the war caused a loss of population, and this loss was revealed in the census of 1870 in the relatively lower rate of increase for the

previous decade than ia the earlier decades. You are not a horse-racer, but you know what a handicap is. When one horse is lighter or swifter than its competitor it is sometimes agreed to handicap the former- A certain quantity of lead is fastened to the saddle in order to diminish the speed and give the other horse a chance to win. Now if the handicapped horse wins the race, notwitstanding that it is weighted with lead, who but a fool would claim that the handicap had not lessened its speed? Yet Jt is such a monstrous claim as this that the protectionist sets up who claims that the tariff does not diminish imports. Such a claim was made in the latest number of the American Economist, the qjrgan of the Protective Tariff League, in an article entitled, “Does Protective Tariff Curtail Foreign Trade?” Its answer to this question is, “Never was a greater fallacy promulgated.” Yet in another column this organ of protect tfonist heresies prints as an article of its own an extract from a speech of Senator Jones, of Nevada, ip the United States Senate oh Sept. 10, in which that Senator ■attempts to show that foreign trade is in itself bad, and is, therefore, not to be desired. “Foreign trade,” he says, “spoils the equilibrium of a nation’s industry; it leaves them one-sided and disjointed, and postpones indefinitely the period of their

natural co-ordination. ” The Senator views with satisfaction “our geographical situation, separated as we are by the fiat of nature from the older forms, tho stagnant conditions, and the imbruting civilizations of other continents.” This was said In defense of a bill which had for its object the diminution of foreign trade, and the words of the Senator were consistent, at least, with that object. And yet what a piece of inconsistency is it for the Economist to print such sentiments as its own, and then attempt to show elsewhere that protection does not curtail foreign trade. In disposing of the whote matter I need not trouble you with a long array of figures. I will only call your attention to the familiar fact, which you have often observed In your own buying, that as the price of goods rises the fewer will be the sales of them. When sugar, for example, is dearest our housekeepers are most economical in the use of it. Fewer pies, cakes, preserves, etc., are made by the great majority of poor and moderately well-to do people; and when clothing is dear they wear their old coats longer to escape buying a new one. Now, when these simple economies of poor people are added together they make a very large stream of loss to the trade of the country. What the people do not buy the retail merchant will not order, and what the retail merchants do not order the wholesale dealers, Importers and agents of manufacturers will not supply. The rise of prices narrows the circle of buyers; and anything which adds to the cost of goods will raise the price to the consumers. A tariff duty on imported goods clearly raises the cost of them, and must therefore increase the price at the same time that it diminishes the buyers of them. The duty on Imported goods is added to the price to the consumer—not only the whole duty, but an extra gain on the duty itself. As those buyers of imported goods are driven away by higher prices, the importation of such goods must necessarily decline. There can be no two opinions about this; It must- be so with absolute certainty. Ti ch aed Ksox

LIGHTS AND SHADOWS

INTHE EVERYDAY 1 LfFE OF THE INDIANANS. ■■ b * Slashed With a Rasor— Shot Bii Eyo Out. Kobbed by a Foolpod —llru ta 11 y Pounded—Suicides—Fort Wayne Raining a Purse for Brsre Officers. *. ’live with tramps. —Peru is now routing out her ® gamblers. —Scarlet fever is epidemic at Willow Branch. —There’s a genuine case of smallpox in Lodi. —Covington has many severe eases of la grippe. —Adeline Guthrie, aged SO years, died at Lebanon. —There aro two cases of spotted fever in Washington. —Jeffersonville is being tortured with la grippe again. —Counterfeit two-dollar bills are circulating in Franklin. —Emanuel Kinsey, of Cfaypool, was fatally hurt by a fall. * —Minors’ State Convention will bo held In Terre Haute, March 3. —Terro Haute’s new electric streetcar system is in operation. —Brazil has a fighting chance of seizing the Indianapolis car works. —Michigan City is going to have a German paper, the 'Freie Lame. —A young Sholbyvilllan claims to have smoked 7,000 cigarettes la.it year. —Hoopston canning factory put up 216,720 cans of pumpkins this year. , —Five hundred thousand pike have been placed in a pond at: Rome City. —A new and unusually powerful gas well has just been drilled at Muncle. —Fort Wayno mall carriers have organized a mutual protective association. —Sholbyville’s new natural-gas company will got its supply near FoOntalntown.

—John Anderson, a tramp, was found In a badly frozen.condition at Martinsville. —Tell City will give a square and $20,000 if they’ll let it bo the county seat of Perry, , —During tho past year the city of Crawfordsville paid $5,810 to salaried officers. —Benjamin Alvls, miner, .was fatally hurt by a fall of slate in the mine near Newburg. —The 8-year-old son of Thomas Anderson, of Owen County, is said to weigh 200 pounds. —Harry Robins, a 6-year-old Shelbyvillo boy, was blinded while fire-crackors. —The steamer Gen. Pike mot with a disaster at Madison and sank in twenty feet of water. —Little Harry Robins, playing with fire-crackers In Shelbyville, shot out both of his eyes. —T. R. Johnson, of South Bend, i 9 dead at tho ago of 77. Ho settled In South Bend In 1843. —James Wales, a Union County farmer, has failed, with liabilities of $12,000 and assets of $7,000. —Nine hundred volumes of standard works have been added to tho library of the prison south. —Samuel Little, Pike County, has brought suit to eject tho striking miners from tho houses near his mine. —Fire in H. D. Plxley & Co.’s establishment in Terro Haute destroyed about $15,000 worth of property. —Lewis Summers, of Providonce, was accidently shot by a companion while hunting. His wounds are fatal. , —lt is a positive fact that gold has been discovered in paying quantities in Blount Township, near Danville. —L. Barber, a brakeman on tho C. & E. Railroad, lost his right hand whilo making a car coupling at Decatur. —Miss Llzzio Snowberg, who was so badly injured while crossing the railway track near Camden, has since died. —John Fitzgerald, sr., a wholesale grocer of Logansport, well-known in the northern part of the State, died suddenly. —Mrs. John W. Mullen slipped and fell on the icy sidewalk at Madison, suffering a double fracture of bones of her leg. —Henry Underwood, near Groveland, lost his fine barn, with many horses and cattle by fire. Partially insured. Incendiary. —Noah Hoffman slipped off a load of hay, near Lebanon. A shotgun he was carrying was discharged, tearing off his left arm. —A fox-drive near Loogootee resulted In the capture of live foxes and about two hundred rabbits, nothing but clubs being used. —The German National Bank, of Evansville, has been reorganized under tho State laws, and increased its capital stock $150,000. —Mrs. Harvey Moore, Greencastle, attempted to eat one quail a day for 30 days. She ate 29, but could not manage the thirtieth. - —— —B. L. Schroit’s 11-year-old son was drowned while skating near Emma. His companions were too badly frightened to try to save him. —A mineral, gas and oil-well company was incorporated at Greenwood, with a capital of SIO,OOO. Boring will commence immediately. —Lexington jokers put a rope around the neck of Charles Madden, who was intoxicated, and suspended him from a coat-hooty. He was nearly lifeless before the jokers realized the gravity of their prank and cut him down. —Mrs. Williamson and Mrs. Ely, returning to their homes in the country alter shopping in Wabajh, were overtaken on the way by a footpad, who deliberately reached in the back of tlieir buggy and took their packages of dry goods, and escaped.

—A movement is on foot In Fort Wayne among the citizens to raise $1,500 for Officers Konaolly and Wilkinson, Kuhns. —John Buchannan and Fittie Bender, of New Market, were found nearly dead in their room at a Jefferson hotel. They had blown out the gas. —Frank Carr and Robert Miessie, Noblesvillo children, furnished with 'powder for New Year’s fun, are now laid up with faces burned beyond recognition, —lt 13 proposed to erect a monument to the memory of the late W. D. Robinson, of Washington, founder of the Brotherhood of Engineers. —The Midland Railroad promises to remove Its shops from Lebanon to Brazil if Clay county will vote a $23,000 subsidy to its proposod extension. —Charles Parker, mulatto, in trouble with Lawrence Wagner, slashed him with his razor in Fort Wayne. Jalledon charge of, assault with intent to kill. —William Law apd Benjamin Law, each in State’s prison serving twelveyear sentences, make application in the Franklin courts for divorces from their wives. * —Marla Woodworth, the faith-cure evangelist, has filed in the Delaware Circuit Court a petition for divorce from Philip H. Woodworth, alleging cruelty and unfaithfulness. ? —A Green County farmer deeded all of his valuable property to his twelve stalwart sons, with the understanding that they would in future support him. Ho is now engaged in hauling rails. —Capitalists from Detroit and Muncle liavo leased twenty acres of James Frazer, noar Hillsboro, for the purpose of using the sand there for the manufacture of glass. The intontion is to locate a factory there. —Hi M. Borcaw and George W. Myers, stock buyors, living In Boone County, wore called to Frankfort to answer to six Indictments charging them with placing a thin ploco Of lead under the weight on their scales, therefore making 100 pounds difference every time the beam wan balanced. They wore fined $350 and sovorely oensured. —The trestle of Sam’s Llok, on the French Lick branch of tho Monon, gave way while a passenger train ‘was crossing. The engineer put on a full hoads>f steam and got tho train ovor, but it went down the enbankment. The engineer/ Andy Erwin, was severely bruised and Mrs. J. A. Ritter,, of West Baden, and the baggago-master, William Price, wore slightly injured. T-George Ellis, of New Albany, while hunting ducks in tho Louisville and Portland Canal, was instantly killed by tho accidental discharge of his gun. He had laid the gun in the bottom of his* boat, and, In picking It up, tho hammer caught against an oar. Tho contents of both barrels struck him under the chin and almost literally blew off his head. —While workmen were engaged in rebuilding tho O. & M. Railway bridge ovor White River at Shoals, a girder was let fall, which knocked a stationary derrick down on tho workmen. It crushed Theodore Wiseman, aged 45, of North Vernon, to death, and seriously hurt three other workmen, Lewis Long, P. W. Jackson and Isaac Little. No blarno is attached to the railroad company. —Marlon Potts, a section-hand on the C., C., C. & St. L. Railroad, was killed by the west-bound passenger train, about .three miles west of Wilkinson, whila working on tho road. He was struck by the ougino and thrown the length of four rails, and his body struck tho handle of the hand-car and broke It off. Ills death was Instantaneous. He was a married man qnd left a family.

—The celebrated case of tho State vs. A. T. Howard was settled by compromise for $6,000 In tho Floyd Circuit Court. Howard was Warden of the Prison' South, and at the expiration of his term of office it is claimed that he was short in his accounts between $15,000 and $20.000. Suit was at onco instituted, and tho matter has been in tho courts for years. A year ago Judgment was rendered for the State top $2,500 in Clark County, and the payment of this judgment is included in the compromise. —William Reed, Arthur Hubbard, Orville Wood, Charles Heffner, and Henry Hunch, of Fairland, were in Muhcio spending New Year’s. At night they boarded a freight train to ride home. When a mile from Fairland, Reed fell from the top of a box-car and bad his head cutoff. His body was found alongside tho track by tho section men. His companions bad not missed him. He was a sober, industrious young man, aged 25. His father was killed at Anderson a year ago by falling on a circular saw. —Robert H. Mitchell, of St. Louis, Mo., recently advertised for a wife, and Miss Alice V. Cammer, of Pennsylvania, a guest of relatives at Clay City, answered. He lost no time in reaching Clay City and making investigations He found MIS 9 Cammor young, handsome, and of excellent social standing. He had brought with him satisfactory reference. License was procured and tho two were married at once. They, left for their new home In St. Joseph, followed by a hundred or more Clay City people, who wished them well. Mr. Mitchell is a school-teacher. The marriage, though on sight, appears to be a happy one. —Six unknown men inveigled Witliam Vorhies out of his house in Peru, and beat him over the head with clubs. Mrs Vorhels found him unconscious and helped him home. No explanation can be made of thie outrage. —A package containing 10,000 postage stamps, valued at S2OO, wa- found in the vault of .the Howard National bank, of Kekomo, the other day. The stamps were the property of ex-Postmaster Somers, and they had been laying in the vault forgotten for five years