Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 33, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 September 1893 — CALAMITY HOWLING. [ARTICLE]

CALAMITY HOWLING.

DETESTABLE TACTICS OF THE REPUBLICAN PRESS. Bewrto to Bald-Headed I.ylng that the Party of McKinleyism May Reap a Little Temporary Advantage—Half the Stories Told Are Untrue. Vulgar Calamity Lying. A certain element of the Republican press, in its efforts to create a more serious scare than is at all necessary, that the Republican party may reap a little temporary advantage, is making itself ridiculous. According to the Des Moines Leader, half the stories of mills closed down and men out of employment are the sheerest lies. The Republican party left the nation in bad shape. The effect of evil legislation was felt and is being felt. But the beneficent influence of the confidence of the business world in the Democracy has prevented much of the injury to business which would otherwise have been felt. If the partisan papers had been fair in their comments on the situation half the actual failures would not have occurred. These papers destroy confidence through vulgar and inexcusable lying. Some of them are overstepping themselves. At this time of the year it is customary for many mills to shut down for short periods, sometimes for. the purpose of making repairs and renovations, and sometimes because the fall trade has not assumed definite proportions. Ordinarily these temporary shut downs are not noticed. This year they are all heralded and the magnitude of each •enterprise exaggerated. Correspondents are anxious ,to earn money, and knowing that partisan newspapers are looking for calamity news, they furnish it to order.

Tba Chicago Inter Ocean was recently compelled to publish a retraction of its slanderous statements concerning the New Albany (Ind.) woolen mills. The mills placed a mortgage, for temporary relief only, on some finished goods. The Inter Ocean correspondent magnified it into-a failure. The manager wrote to the Inter Ocean as follows: We have run every day and night this year np to last week, and run every day last week and expect at present to run every day this year. Onr business is prosperous and we are making money, and expect to soon be able to cancel the mortgage that was placed, and will cancel it not later than November. Your paper simply trlghtened some of our creditors, who have no reason to be frightened, and in order to set the matter right, we believe yon should publish this letter in full in laerge size type, pToperly headed, in order to set right the wrong which you have done us. The hail la are wide open, running full blast every day, and we are billing goods as though nothing had happened. But this sort of injurious calamity lying is not peculiar to Chicago papers. A favorite theme with the Republican journals of the West is that the grain buyers cannot handle the new crop for lack of money. An lowa Falls grain dealer writes to the Leader: “I have noticed of late the Republican papers throughout the State have been howling about no money to buy grain with. To show you that this is absolutely false, I inclose a circular from the largest commission house in Chicago, soliciting business and offering to pay all drafts on grain. Never in the history of the grain trade has so liberal a grain circular been issued. The men who cannot get drafts paid must have very poor credit and standing in Chicago." The -circular inclosed is from a firm whose standing is first class, and reads: Notwithstanding the prevailing stringency in the money market, we are prepared at all times to pay drafts, with bills lading attached, to a reasonable amount against all shipments of grain or seeds. Shippers may rest assured that their property consigned to us will have the same careful attention that has characterized the management of our business during its existence, now nearly a quarter of a century.

McKinley Will Not Be Forgotten. The Fifty-third Congress was elected for the purpose of repealing the odious and burdensome tariff laws of the eountry. There were other issues joined between the parties, and in the East there was a notable effort before the election, as there now is after It, to belittle the question of the tariff. But it failed. Mr. Cleveland was an experiment as President up to the date of his famous reform message to Congress. Before that he was regarded as an untried leader of the Democratic party; after that he became a force in the economic battle being waged by the Morrisons, the Carlisles and the Millses against plutocracy and class legislation. The warfare was a long and memorable one and the people finally triumphed. They learned what they wanted and they asked for it at the ballot-box. It was not a victory of the outs against the ins. It was not a contest for the spoils of office. It was a triumph of the oppressed over their oppressors. It was a contest of the people against the subsidista. The average voter is not going to forget tariffs on account of a money stringency. He lias been so long familiar with a case of chronic stringency in his own case that the word uoes not frighten him. He expects a cheaper breakfast table and a cheaper coat under thfe new regime, and if he do not get it he will know the reason why. Congress will be expected to do all in its power to relieve the financial situation, but its chief duty is a revision of the tariff laws, and its work must begin immediately after the extra session convenes. Nobody understands this better than the Democratic members themselves. The unwise financial laws to which the President’s proclamation alludes include the McKinley law. —St. Louis Republic.

The Campaign Is Over. There is evident* y a misapprehension of the political and economic situation in this country in the minds of Republican politicians. From the retired Harrison to the qgpiring McKinley, from the amiable Depew to the arrogant Reed, they aro talking as though the reform of the tariff were still an open question. You mistake, gentlemen. The tariff campaign is over for three years at least. Try and get that fact into your heads. We met you upon the issue of McKinley ism in 1890,and you received the worst beating that any party in power evey experienced. We met you again, upon an appeal from judgment, last year. You were again overwhelmed. A President and Congress pledged to a reform of your worse-than-war tariff were elected. The Democratic party will execute its commission from the people as soon as the more immediately imperative duty, which likewise grew out of your legislation, is performed. Do not imagine that you can now work the “tariff scare” to defeat the will of the people. That fight is over.—New York World. Concerning Annexation. On the subject of annexation the Louisville Courier-Journal (Dem.) has this to say: “We are not here to show the world how big a fabric of government may be built up, but how sound. Of great empires the world has had enough. It is ours to perpetuate a great nation founded on no paltry territorial ambitions, but instinct throughout with the animating principle of the greatest good to the greetoet number

without violence to the rights of any. Advocates of Hawaiian and Canadian annexation would spare themselves much wear and tear of spirit by bearing this in mind. How Labor Is Protected. An interesting revelation of the way the protected manufacturers of Pennsylvania try to benefit the condition of tbe American workingman is made by so unimpeachable an authority as the Philadelphia Press. This journal prints an interview with Mr. John J. Quinlan, the chief contract-labor inspector at Ellis Island in New York harbor, who says that during July his force examined at least 2,000 people who were suspected of being contract laborers, and barred out some 300, of whom 200 have already been returned to the countries from which they came. “We have found in a great many cases,” he said, “that the contract men were coming here to work in the iron industries, principally in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana,” at wages as low as 90 cents a day, against $1.50 and $1.75 paid the American workman. Mr. Quinlan proceeded as follows: Here is an instance that I can show yon from my papers of a skilled Hungarian going to the Carnegie Works at Homestead—if he had not been prevented—at $1 25 a day, when the regular wages are $1.75. The usual procedure in such Instances is, if the imported man gets through all right, they ask him at the works, having found that he is a skilled man. “You have quite a number of friends working on the other side in the village yon came from, haven’t you?” “Oh, yes," is the reply. “How much do they get per day?" “Well. 40 or 50 cents."- “We'll give them $1.25. Write to them and ask them to come out." And that is the way it goes, said Mr. Qninlan. The theory on which the owners of the Carnegie Works are granted the protection of high-tariff duties is that they may pay high wages to American workingmen, and' thus in turn protect these workingmen from the competition of the “pauper labor” of Europe.— American Industries.

The Unemployed. Nothing can be more dishonestly partisan than the attempt of the protection organs to make it appear that fear of the tariff reform which the people have twice decreed is responsible for the large number of workingmen . out of employment.' It is obviously a false claim for these reasons: 1. By far the greater number of the unemployed have not been engaged in the protected industries. The decrease of activity is caused, as all candid business men agree, by a monetary distrust, due to fear of the lapsing oi the currency to a silver standard. It affects ' the railroads, the building trades, domestic service, silver mining, and a hundred other industries and occupations having no connection with the tariff. 2. The reforms proposed in the tariff will stimulate rather than depress ini dustries. Can anybody but an idiot, or a ! protection editor, conceive that a propj osition to untax their raw materials or j machinery will stop cotton or woolen i mills, iron manufacturers and the conj sumers of tin-plate? j 3. The American people are not fools | or children to be frightened at the I prospect of having their own twioe- | repeated demand fulfilled a year hence. 5. Every organized body of business i men that has spoken on the subject has attributed the present trouble to another cause. Gov. McKinley's Prayer* and Breeches. It is very touching to hear Gov. McKinley “pray God that the free traders will for once live up to their promises." If Gov. McKinley’s breeches are as full of /shoddy as those of many of his fel-low-citizens who have been put under the McKinley law he will have to moderate his praying or gqt the knees patched.—St. Louis Post-Dispatch. The effort to utilize the financial depression as a life-preserver for the McKinley law is doomed to failure.