Democratic Sentinel, Volume 18, Number 7, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 March 1894 — THE REPUBLICAN PANACEA. [ARTICLE]

THE REPUBLICAN PANACEA.

A Medicine that Stimulate* the Patient, Yet Reduce* Hl* fever. The protectionist says to the manufacturer, “We give you a protective tariff that you may get higher prices for your goods.” That is the object of a protective tariff, or the manufacturers would not clamor so much for it. To the consumers of these same goods —the farmer, the lawyer, the mechanic, the doctor —he says, “We will give you a protective tariff that you may get goods you buy of the manufacturer cheaper,” And to the laborer he says, “We give you a protective tariff that you may get higher wages from the manufacturer.” And the people are asked to believe him in each case. Let us suppose the object of the protective tariff was to enable lawyers to charge larger fees for their legal services, and as a lawyer I was to say to my clients “You ought to favor this law, for while it enables me to charge you larger fees, it also enables you to get mv services more cheaply." Let the miller say to his customers: “You should favor this law because it enables me to take more toll from you. and at the same time give you more meal." So with the physician. So with the mechanic who "builds your house. This argument would not work at all in any of these cases, but iust apply it to the manufacturer and it acts like a charm. It is a wonderful antidote. It seems to be a kind of medicine which stimulates the patient, yet reduces his fever, acts as a powerful laxative, yet produces constipation: feeds the system, yet depletes the patient: a fat, and yet an anti-fat: a wine that may be taken for the stomach's sake when it is sick, yet a powerful emetic; it is a narcotic, and yet an atropine; it brings smiling happiness and solid comfort to those who toil In the workshops, and yet it is prolific of strikes find lockouts: it richly rewards labor, yet fills the land with paupers and tramps. There is nothing In all nature like it. It is centripetal, yet a centrifugal '.force. It contracts and expands under the same influence and condition. Administered to a Democrat in perfect health, in full doses, he begins forthwith to preach the gospel of Republicanism. It does these things, and is all this and more : it gives the men who make the goods higher prices, and the men who ouy them cheaper goods. Surely there is nothing else like it on earth, or in the waters under the earth. Heaven alone, and I speak it not sacrilegiously, can produce such another panacea, a compound which will produce exactly the opposite effect upon similar subjects under like conditions. This theory of raising the price of goods for the men who tell, ana lowering them for the men who buy, reverses every rule given us in nature by nature's Goa. With His rule in nature, we know how to apply remedies; the doctor can write his prescriptions; the farmer sow his grain, and expect like to produce like; he can propagate his stock with intelligence; the mariner can guide his vessel; the astronomer can calculate the xsoming eclipse, and Old Probabilities can himself guess at the weather; it may be sometimes the guess is wide of the mark, but this now gospel of protection reverses all laws, and bids farewell to all the rules where the principle is engrafted. Better stick to nature and to nature's law. Say, if you wish, protection benefits the manufacturer for the time being—that is, it temporarily benefits him—and none will controvert it, and the contention ends. The logic, so called of th© protectionist is thus reduced to absurdity.—Hon. James D. Richardson, of Tennessee.

Senate May Be Mended. The Representatives of the people have just passed, after months of preparation, full hearings and thorough debate, a measure of tax reduction and tariff reform. It received the largest majority given to any tariff bill in the House since the close of the war. It executes the mandate of the people. It redeems the pledge of the Democratic party. And yet there are Senators, says the New York World, who claim, and are apparently to be granted the privilege of amending the bill so as to restore taxes on iron, coal, sugar and perhaps other articles. They do this not upon any pretense that it will benefit the whole people to tax these articles: they do it because they are interested personally, in their pockets, in coal or iron mines, in freighting or manufacturing corporations, or in sugar stock, or because their friends or their immediate localities are thus interested

The claim thus put forth upon the ground of “Senatorial courtesy” involves the highest exercise of governmental power—the power of taxation. If the Senators from Maryland and West Virginia can impose a tax on coal; if the Senators ircm Alabama can put a tax on iron one: if the Senators from Louisiana can restore the tax on sugar; if—io reach the ridiculous in climax—the junior Senator from New York can increase the tax on collars and cuffs, they have a power which is not exercised by any sovereign in Europe. The British House of Lords is approaching the inevitable “mended or ended,” under a much less obnoxious exercise of its power to revise or reject legislation favored by the people and proposed by the Commons. The upper house of Congress should rememner that this is a government by the peofde, not a government by States; that t is a government by the right of majorities, not a government by the courtesy of individuals; and that it is a government for the people and not for monopolies. Our Senate cannot be ended. It can be, as it has been, mended. It will be mended if it seeks now to thwart the will of the people. A Vain Hope. The decision of the Senate Finance Committee not to grant hearings on the tariff bill means that no dilatory tactics will be tolerated, and that action upon the measure will be reached as soon as the rules of the Senate will permit It is likely that within a month votes will be taken that will test the relative strength of the friends and enemies of the bill. Already it is evident that these votes will be a disappointment to those who have been cherishing the hope that the verdict of the House would be reversed by the Senate—that, if not defeated, the bill would be rendered .innocuous through amendments that would essentially change its character. The indications now are that the bill will taeither be defeated nor mutilated, but will pass the Senate substantially as it came from the House. As the Democrats have a majority in the Senate the bill cannot be changed except by Democratic votes, and Democratic Senators are no more likely than Democratic Representatives to be stampeded by the cry that “the country is being plunged into free trade.” They know that the Wilson bill is really a highly protective measure. They know that the tax it levies averages five per cent, higher than was recommended by the Republican Tariff Commission of 1883. And they know that the agitation against it is simply the last desperate effort of the trusts and pampered industries to preserve their privileges. Until the votes were actually taken in

I the House the vain hope was indulged I that the vital features of the bill would ;be stricken out. When the roll-calls 1 brought disappointment, it was confidently expected that when the bill was put upon its passage the majority for It would be so small that it would go to the Senate with a practical handicap upon it. But the Democrats of the I House stood the test nobly, and the majority exceeded the most sanguine estimates of its friends. It will be so in the Senate. Strong efforts will no doubt be made to amend the bill in many particulars. There is : little likelihood, however, that it will be radicallv changed. No Democratic Senator will lend himself to the defeat or emasculation of a measure which ,1 the countty recognizes as carrying out with moderation and conservatism the reform to which his party is pledged.— I New York World. I Overdoing the Calamity Howl Last summer there was an unmistak able panic. At that time most of the ; McKinley organs and most of the McKinley party in Congress admitted that the panic was due to the silver purchase legislation, and not at all to ; any fear of tariff changes. They i joined the party supporters of the administration in both houses in putting a stop to the silver purchases. They joined Manufacturer Dolan in showing that a panic which occurred four months after the incoming of the new administration and eight months after i the triumph of the Democratic party I on a platform demanding a radical reduction of the tariff could not have been caused by fear of that reduction. But now that the panic has ceased it suits the purpose of the McKinley pari tisane to attribute all the after effects , —all the depiession in industry and I trade, all suspension of work, all re- ; ductions of wages—to a mortal fear of ; the Wilson bill, which does not go half so far as the platform demanded. And ■ not only so, but for two months or : more they have been howling calamity at the top of their voices and doing 1 everything in their power to create I another panic. They;.organs have encouraged an*, mine owners work, or out down or threaten to cut down wages. To a certain extent they have succeeded in their malign efforts to create ' panic and do all the mischief possible. But they are more than likely to discover very soon that they have overdone the business. For weeks past there has been industrial improvement, and for last week Bradstreet’s recorded no less than forty resumptions by industrial establishments against only six suspensions. If the Democrats are reasonably expeditious about passing the Wilson bill substantially as it iiassed the House even the dullest will see in less than throe months from now that the croakers and prophets of evil are false prophets. They will see that there is no harm but much good in a reduction of the burdens of the people. They will see that this "protection” whion they have regarded with superstitious reverence is a cheat and a fraud, doing harm always and good never. Then the calamity army will suffer from the recoil of their overloaded guns. They will find when it comes to the Congees ional elections next November that the stampede they are I trying to create will be from their own I camp. Just a few months of actua’ I experience under the Wilson bill will I satisfy the people that it is worth a much longer trial, and the longer trial will satisfy them that they have nothing to lose, but very much to gain, by a still larger installment of commercial and industrial liberty. But the Senate is reminded that to this end what is now needed is “action; action." Chicago Herald.

Protection Bluff. The Kansas City Times (Dom.) thinks it is high time for the Republican politicians and newspapers to show a little honesty on the tariff issue. “Those partisan advocates,” it says, “are now attempting by false pretences, by advising sham lockouts and unnecessary reductions in the wages of workingmen, by bluffing and bulldozing, by obtaining petitions from the dependent employes of tariff barons, signed under duress to make a manufactured show of public sentiment against a reduction in taxation! against relief from crushing burdens! against relief from exactions and robberies of trusts and monopolies! It is altogether the most extraordinary exhibition of impudence and insincerity ever displayed in the direction of criticism of public affairs in the history of this country." Croker and the Income Tax. Tammany, which is in politics for revenue only, is hand and glove with the great corporations and capitalists of New York. They serve it and it serves them. Through this offensive and defensive alliance Richard Croker has risen in a few years from a state of destitution to the possession of an income which would have to bear a considerable tax under the new revenue law. It would not be particularly Sleasant to him to pay this tax, and oubtless it would be still less pleasant to have to specify the amount and the sources of his income.—San Francisco Examiner.

General Dl.e.ter Unaccounted For. From England, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Greece—in short, from the chief manufacturing and commercial nations all over the globe, come reports of business depression and Of surlering anu distress among the people. Will our protectionist friends who so glibly ascribe every ill that has befallen us to the fear of the Wilson bill tell us the cause of the suffering abroad? We have been told by them that the Wilson bill was to benefit foreigners at the expense of our own people. Then the result abroad ought to be an unprecedented boom. Please explain.—Oakland County Post. The South Not to Be Fooled. Governor McKinley’s remark that the New South stands in particular need of protection at this time in order to develop its infant industries would be more persuasive were it not for the fact that the same plea is made in behalf of the infant industries of New England, which are considerably older than Governor McKinley and are yet unable to stand alone according to the protectionists’ idea. With such impressive lessons before them the Southerners will probably prefer a different brand of pap.—Boston Herald.

The Tariff in the Senate. Business cannot afford to wait while old, old arguments arc rehearsed anew. Do something.—Boston Globe. Let the battle for tariff reform be short, sharp and decisive in the Senate and the Democracy may thus rescue itself from the popular disapprobation it has so wantonly provoked.—Philadelphia Times. “The Democrats of the Senate have it in their power to make the Wilson bill a law before the Democratic year is out, and they should move energetically to secure that result.” says the Atlanta Constitution (Dem.). It is a melancholy but entirely rational reflection that professional pride will hardly allow the Senate to permit itself to be outdone by the House •in the matter of voluminous oratory en the Wilson bill.—Washington Star.