Rensselaer Republican, Volume 21, Number 7, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 October 1888 — AN ABLE ARGUMENT. [ARTICLE]

AN ABLE ARGUMENT.

A Member of-the national Parly Tells Why lie will Support Harrison, Dr. H. Z. Leonard, of Logansport, candidate for Governor in 1884, on the National ticket, and an able and well known lecturer* has published the following in the Indianapolis Journal: It is knfiwn'to you, and to a large pro-, portion of the electors of Indiana and other states, that since 1869. and esjiecially since the nomination of Peter Cooper, in 1876, I have been identified with the national party. * * * Our revenue laws are being assailed by one of the political parties, and this assault involves the means devised and used to carry the nation through one of the most gigantic rebellions of history. The assault is made upon the subterfuge of reducing the surplus. To my mind the reduction of the revenue in the manner proposed by the Mills bill, as estimated by its author,- about $70,000,000, is a part of a great conspiracy to prevent the payment of the national debt, and to render it absolutely necessary to do one or two things—fund the debt into long, interest-bearing bonds or repudiate the nation's obligations by taking from our shores our money, that measures all value, labor and the products of labor, thus reducing the wages of laborers in tho ratio that our circulating medium is contracted as our money appreciates in vahie. England knows but one money that measures value —gold. All our balances must therefore be paid in England in gold bullion or its equivalent measured in gold. With the Mills biil in force we reduce our revenue, we throw open our gates and invite absolute min and pauperization of the nation, and put ourselves at the mercy of the money power of England—that power which has ruined Ireland and all other countries around which she has wound the coils of free trade. * * * To my mind no argument can be stronger in favor of protection the protection of our money. Every ship-load of goods takes away our money * (gold) that measures value. Continue this policy and the inevitable result will ~~be~that-gohl at-onee-beeomes- mere-vada—-able. Silver, greenbacks and banking currency in their value bid farewell to gold. The more goods imported the wider they glide apart from each other; and deeper and darker becomes the

chasm of our woes. Gold becomes scarcer in the payment of English manulactures, and in the same relation it becomes dearer in America. Land depreciates, the now busy marts of trade in this country are clothed in sackcloth and mourning, tramps are multipled, and the wails of American laborers are heard everywhere. England becomes thh mistress of our financial interests, as she is wherever her poison vine of free trade has been allowed to fasten itself on the body-politic. Every importation of English goods—the product of her cheap labor—must take the place of just so much of the production of American labor. Necessarily, therefore, the power of American labor to produce money must, in the same ratio, be reduced. It is burning the candle at both ends by shipping out our gold, and reducing the riwer ofNvage workers to earn money, can imagine of no scheme so certain to

invite financial ruin, destroy the equilibrium of our currency, and supplant an apparent surplus by a deficit. There is no surplus so long as we have $1 of outstanding interest-bearing debt. That debt [largely held by the foreign power] should be anticipated and paid just as “tertasonrrevenues accumulate, instead of enacting a policy which breaks down our t great system of internal revenue and source of our prosperity bv striking at the primary source of wealth, viz., the wage-workers. Holding these views, I cannot hut look with deep concern upon the insidious efforts of the advocates of free trade, however much it is sugarcoated. Believing that the protection of American industries is the protection of the life-blood of the nation—money — I shall most cheerfully Support Harrison and Horton for the highest positions in the gift of the American people. I ask a candid, unprejudiced consideration and reconsideration of the reasons here set forth by my old friends and warm friends with whom I have heretofore been associated. I remain, most respect-

fully,

H. Z. LEONARD.

Logansport, Oct. 2. There is a harriMin and Morton club of 600 Polish voters in BulTalo, every one of whom voted for Cleveland in 1884. The president of the club is Michael Makowski, a young man of 24 years, who has resided in this country eight years, ferapklly making an independent fortune, and is a political organizer of grcatsVill and ability.