People's Pilot, Volume 2, Number 51, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 June 1893 — Our Plea. [ARTICLE]

Our Plea.

Now brother Democrat, you are also an American citizen, have the same interests, duties and responsibilities that -your brother Republican has, fifteen billions of foreign indebtedness, nine millions of mortgages, fourteen thousand of bankrupted firms annually, a depressed and almost ruined agriculture, strikes, lockouts, riots and bloodshed by workingmen in an almost hopeless struggle for their rights, men unemployed, children starving, corporations insolent and thriving as never before; all these things confront you aud demand your immediate attention and the application of youi corrective measures. You have paced up and down the land fm years, asking for power, and bewailing all these evils. You are different from your Repubii can brother in this, he has denied their existence, you have admitted their existence, and been a calamity howler of the first water. Now what measures do you propose, what remedies would you apply? Say Mr. Democrat, it is not our purpose to place you at a greater disadvantage than your own weak and silly course has. You would correct all this by reforming the tariff, that is all, nothing more. Be honest, Mr. Democrat, and make confession, for you know it is so. Your president differs from Harrison in nothing save tariff reduction. He is a single gold standard man, an enemy to silver, believes in National banks, swore he would carry out civil service reform, yet violates the law constantly. Except tariff reduction Harrison and Cleveland are as like as two peas. Now Democrat are you shallow enough to believe that you can reduce freights, raise prices and equalize taxiation by tariff reduction. All the evils in our monetary system, all the extortion in our transportation and transmission of intelligence service, all the evils of land monopoly, all the wrohgs of our taxation system, that makes twenty per cent of our wealth pay eighty per cent of our taxes, are to be remedied by tariff reduction. Of all the infernal nonsense and baldheaded humbuggery that was ever palmed oft on any people, this tariff reduction panacea

that is to cur* all the ills that afflict tha body politic, takes the cake. Democratic leaders knew better, but it was the one question that they could juggle with and mean nothing. They had to discuss something before the people, and if they did not discuss tariff.it would have to be land, money transportation or some other live issue and that they did not want, nor would not have, so that old fleshless bone, the tariff gag, was made to do service once more. The absurdity of meeting the wants of the age by merely reducing the tariff need only to be stated to be manifest to every discerning man. Our Democratic friends have a powerful organization; they carried the last national election triumphantly, they have full possession of the legislative and executive departments of the government. Confronting them are the gravest of questions growing out of an advancing civilization, that must be settled and settled right, the transportation ques. tion, the money, land and taxation questions, and they won’t down, will come to the front in some form or another constantly. and this powerful organization, the great Democratic party has but one measure, tariff reduction. Oh shame that any set of men will so trifle with their country’s welfare. Tariff reduction to meet every evil. They reminded us of the quack doctor in the early days of Iroquois county, it matters not as to she affliction of his patients, the remedy was the same whether it was flux or fever, consumption or cancer, dyspepsia er rheumatism, each was pronounced “an obstinate case,” and one prescription was given for all. He would assume an owlish air of wisdom, shake his head dubiously and say, “a very obstinate case indeed, give the patient all the salts he can stand.” So with our Democratic friends, and their tariff cure-all It matters hot as to the national ill, it can be knocked higher than a kite with tariff reform, “it is an obstinate case, give it all the tariff reduction it can stand.” Our Republican friends would relieve us by administering the medicine that produced the disease, while our Democratic friends would dose us with the same medicine, accompanied by a huge dose of tariff reduction. (To bo continued.)