Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 34, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 September 1892 — THE WORK OF CONGRESS [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

THE WORK OF CONGRESS

The Republican campaign will be run on the installment plan. Fat manufacturers will please call at Mr. Wanamaker’s bargain counter. It is rumored that Quay and Platt are both making a sneak for the breastworks. The formation of a Cleveland Republican club at Homestead shows which way the wind is blowing. Harrison’s campaign is wholly in the hands of Federal office-holders, with Harrison himself to boss them. The Republican claim that the McKinley bill would raise wages is suffering from a severe case of dislocation.

The Globe-Democrat says almost every anarchist is a Democrat. Gen. Grant was a Democrat when the war broke out. When the protectionists begin to hire speakers at the rate of $350 per speech it looks as if “patriotism” was at a low ebb. » Under the four years of Cleveland the governmental expenditures were $330,000,000 less than under the four years of Harrison. The Republican platform of New York is somewhat different from the national platform, but Mr. Harrison is gradually coming to it.

There can be no question that Tom Reed’s Congress was the greatest Congress this country has ever seen. Tom admits it himself. It is said that Harrison was the choice of all the respectable element of the Republican party. What a minority nominee he must have been! The cost of running the Government under Harrison is $7.01 per capita; under Garfield and Arthur it ijjas $6.43 per capita, and under Cleveland only $6.12 per capita. The Republicans are hunting up “devices” for the heads of their tickets. In connection with Harrison, Carnegie and Whitelaw Reid, how would a rat-trap do? If “the foreigner pays the tariff tax” for Kansas and Nebraska, why doesn’t he send Western farmers money enough to catch up with the interest o< their McKinley mortgages? Secretary Foster is a great financier. Only a Napoleon of Finance would hold back the Government workman’s pay in order to make a false showing for a depleted Treasury.

We do not recollect having seen Mr. Blaine’s name In a single Republican newspaper during the whole of last week. It seems to be considered treasonable for a Republican paper to mention him.

The difference In Major McKinley’s assertions regarding the tariff may he accounted for by the fact that he was the hired attorney of protection, and served it up to suit his clients. Thus he gave them high-priced iron in Pennsylvania, and cheap iron in Nebraska.

The President is still using his officeholders for all they are worth, paying them out of the public treasury while they are-whooping it up for him In politics. The sending of Steve Elkins, Secretary of War, to manage the West Virginia convention is only one of many instances of tax-consuming bossism. «————— During the ten years of high tariff taxes from 1880 to 1890, when the taxes were made higher still, the number of farm mortgages filed in Nebraska exceeded by thousands the total number of inhabited houses in the State as shown by the census of 1890, and this is true of Kansas also. So here is one Western industry that has been promoted by McKinley Republicanism. St. Louis Republic: The lowa Democrat* are in the fleid for business again this year. The platform adopted by the convention at Davenport and the speeches made therein indicate not only tha> lowa is good

ocratic in three elections, and this isn’t the year for the revolution to revolve backward. " -» The Republicans studiously avoid comparing the appropriations of the late session of Congress with the preceding session under Republican rule. According to Reed the late session appropriated $510,000,000, as against $462,000,000 by the first session of Reed’s Congress, but he neglects to mention that the intervening session appropriated $541,000,000. The Chicago Tribune, which has been ridiculing the idea of reviving the force bill, lets the cat out of the bag when it says, “The breath of life cannot be blown into the force bill unless the Republicans can carry a majority of the House, hold the Senate, and re-elect Harrison.” As the New York Evening Post shows, then “the only way to keep the force bill dead is to elect the Democratic ticket. ”

The Indianapolis Journal says there is more joy in the Democratic camp over one failure of one manufacturing enterprise than over the establishment of twenty. Very often the failure of a manufacturing establishment is a greater benefit than the establishment of twenty. Manufacturing establishments are divided into two classes, those that are selfsupporting, and those that require enormous subsidies. Self-supporting establishments do not fail, but blood suckers—like tin-plate mills, for instance—demand much and give little. Chicago Herald: In their efforts to return that distinguished corporation attorney and “political” greaser, John C. Spooner, to the United States Senate, the Republicans of Wisconsin are apparently determined to Mexicanize that hitherto peaceful and orderly commonwealth. Ever since Spooner’s involuntary retirement to private life, a little more than a year ago, the earth has been, in the opinion of the average Wisconsin Republican, out of its orbit. The wind has blown steadily from the wrong direction, and the sun has failed to rise at the right point.

It is not unusual to hear It asserted that protection means higher prices to the farmer, to the mechanic and to the manufacturer. In the same breath it is asserted that the cost of living is not increased. How can this be? If protection increases the price of the farmer’s products and of the manufacturer’s products, why is it that the cost of living is not increased? If protection causes wheat, potatoes, butter and eggs to bring higher prices, does it not cost more for the laboring man to live? Possibly the high-tariff prophets assume that the cost of living is not increased because he and his family eat less when prices advance. This may be the explanation, but it is not a satisfactory one.

From the beginning of the world until the present day no Government ever raised the wages of the people, and no Government ever will. It Is something no Government can do, but in the campaign made by Messrs. Harrison and Carnegie in 1888 the most ignorant among the people were encouraged to believe that by voting for high-tariff taxes they could get their houses furnished with Brussels carpets and pianos. Such speeches were made throughout Indiana, and Harrison himself did all he could to encourage this belief. It appeared that there were people ignorant enough to listen to such arguments and to he convinced by them that the Government owes them high wages; that it is the duty of Government to make their wages high, and it is their right to have their wages increased by Government.

It is said, in aggravation of Chairman Carter’s conduct as a book agent, that he proposed to show the farmers how they might escape from financial difficulties that oppressed them. He represented, it is said, that if they would put second mortgages on their farms to acquire an interest in the “Footprints of Time” they would soon earn money enough to pay off the first mortgages. The advice proved delusive, and the homes of the victims were sold to satisfy the mortgages. We take no stock in these scandals. If the statements are true they show that Mr. Carter is a marvelously proper man to stand at the head of the Republican party organization and to conduct its canvass. What he is charged with doing on a small scale the Republican party has done for a quarter of a century on a large scale. It has represented to the farmers of ■the country, and particularly of the Northwest, that their only chance for prosperity was in supporting the protection system of the Republican party. Those who have been deluded by these statements have been persistently robbed by that policy r and many of them have lost their bbWes in consequence. If Mr. Carter,.tl|#refore, has done acts imputed to mm, his party has done well to select him as its representative. He is a trtte Republican, and thoroughly in accora with Republican policy

IT'S A BAD 9HOWINO FOR REPUBLICANS. AH of the BlUs Which the Democratic House Passed for the Benefit of the People Were Killed by the Republican Senate. Congress and Its Work. The work of the first session of the Fifty-second Congress will be the subject of much controversy, and necessarily an issue of no small Importance In a national campaign which involves the election of a new House of Representatives as well as that of a President and a Vice President. For this reason judgment of its acts will be influenced more strongly than in intermediate years by partisan inclinations. It is obvious, however, that no better or fairer method of judging its performances from a political standpoint than by comparison with its Republican predecessor can be devised. This is a test which Democrats will welcome, and to which Republicans must submit. The Democrats of the House did their best to lighten the burdens of taxation on the people and industries of the country. Under the lead of the Ways and Means Committee a bill was passed making wool free, in the hope of reviving the drooping woolen manufacturing interests and encouraging the wool-grower. The same bill abolished the compensatory duty on woolen goods. The result of this would have been the cheapening of clothes which had been made much more costly by the McKinley law. Another bill made free the binding twine used by the wheat growers and the cotton ties used by the planters of the South. Another made ore containing both silver and lead free,

the purpose being to cheapen one of the most common articles of domestic and industrial use. The bill to reduce the enormous McKinley tax on tin plates would have put an end to a contemptible fraud, and would have saved the people of this country from $10,000,000 to $15,000,000 a year. When these tax-relief bills reached the Senate the Republican majority promptly pigeon-holed them. In the interest of certain manufacturers of cheap plushes, shoddy and certain kinds of woolens, they denied the people cheap clothes. In tho interest of tne cordage trust thoy refused cheap binding-twine to the wheat growers. In behalf of the hoop-iron makers of Pittsburg they insisted upon dear cotton ties for the Southern planters. To help the makers of plate they refused to put an end to the robbery of the people who buy din-ner-pails, pots, pans and roofing-tin, and retained tho tax that increases the price of canned goods and has already closed up a soore of canning factories, depriving labor of its work as well as making food dearer. In brief, all of the bills which the Democratic House passed for tho benefit of the people were killed by the, Benito. The material results of the session will not be of great advantage to the country, for the simple reason that Republican legislation in the billion dollar Congress, a Republican Senate aud a Republican President prevented the Democratic House from carrying out the reforms desired by the people. The New York World is satisfied that the political situation is unchanged by the session. It remains what it was in the campaign of 1890. The Democrats have tried to reduce expenditures, but they oould not. They have tried to drive the administration to reform the abuses in tho pension bureau, but they have been met and overcome by the President’s obstinate adherence to a scandalous administration. Above all, the Democrats have tried to abolish some of the evils and to lighten some of the burdens of the McKinley tariff law. The have attacked some of its most flagrant abuses and some of the worst trusts it has engendered, but the friends of trusts and monopoly controlled the Senate and sat in the White House, and the efforts of Democratic tariff reformers were lost except as they show to the country that the party is still bent upon accomplishing the task which the people assigned to it in 1890.

HOW IT WORKS.