Rensselaer Republican, Volume 26, Number 36, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 May 1894 — THE CAMPAIGN. [ARTICLE]

THE CAMPAIGN.

Th© Ruinous Character of -!*ropposed Tariff Legislation* Why the President Falters.« Tndianopolta journalThe deficit of the Treasury is going on at the rate of $75,000,000 a year. If the Wilson bill shall become a law —a tariff neither for protection nor revenue, this deficit will continue. If the Senate committee bill, with its sugar duties and withal something of a revenue tariff measure, shall become a law, the deficit of the Treasury will be stopped, in time, but not until a deficit of $75,000,000 or $100,000,000 shall have appeared. This deficit must be met. The first issue of $50,060,000 of bonds will be used to meet a part of it, because the coin notes which Mr. Carlisle redeems with the proceeds of these bonds must be paid out again. That $50,000,000 will not be much more than half the amount needed, and much less than half if the House bill without a duty on sugar shall become law. The issue of bonds is very unpopular with the mass of the Democracy of the South and West, because it is an increase in the debt. • Instead of issuing bonds it would resort to irredeemable treasury notes, which, appearing as money, would not be counted as debt. A proposition to that effect has been made in the House. This element of the Democracy, which controls the. party, is out with the President and Secretary Carlisle because they have already issued $50,000,000 of bonds. They have told the Secretary if the so-called seigniorage could be coined, giving §58,000,000 of silver certificates and dollars, the Secretary would not be compelled to sell bonds to meet currency expenses. Knowing that much more will be needed than the money -derived from the saleof the $50,000,000 of bonds, Mr. Carlisle has, it is said, committed himself to the Bland seigniorage bill. If the bill becomes a law by the President’s signature another $50,000,000 of bonds will not be issued. llf he vetoes it Mr.’.Carlisle will be compelled to issue another $50,000,000 of bonds. To increase the public debt $100,000,000 a year to meet current expenses is an evidence of maladministration which even Mr. Cleveland does not care to furnish. If silver bullion which does not belong to the government can be coined to pay half of the deficit no more bonds will need be sold. True, the government vaults are bursting with silver dollars; and it pays out silver certificates to have them return at once, not being legal tender money’ and redeemable in silver. Most of Mr. Cleveland’s Cabinet favor the seigniorage device. Between his gold monometallistic maxims and an escape from putting another load upon the market the President falters. It may be added that if Mr. Cleveland would send word to Congress to drop tariff agitation the revenues would increase at once to a figure that would prevent a deficit.

The McKinley Tariff Not a Principle. Indianapolis Journal. Senator Quay, of Pennsylvania, delivered an excellent speech on the tariff question a few days a<ro. Senator Quay is sometimes called the ‘‘Silent Man.” He certainly never talks for the sake of talking, and when he does talk he says something. He is a much abler man than he generally gets credit for. He is a read er and thinker, and few in e n in public, life are better posted oh public life than he. At one pointrm his speech he referred to the common charge that the Republican party was irrevocably committed to the McKinley tariff as the ultimate expression of legislative wisdom and a perfect formula of protection. On this point Senator Quay said: The McKinley bill was not a principle; it was an experimental application of a theory. The exact results of its operations could not safely be predicted, because no one, not even those who were experts in the various schedules it embraced, could understand with absolute precision the exact measure of protection which it would extend to each article catalogued in its hundreds of paragraphs. The. McKinley bill was designed as an exemplification of the Republican idea of what fostering encouragement was-due to American capiital and American labor. As finally placed upon the statute books it was still subject to every modification which its operation in practice might show to be necessary in the equitable interest of the producer of raw material, of the manufacturer and those he employed, and of the national treasury, to which it promised revenue. It is not perfect, nor considered by its authors to be perfect. It was felt and was stated that, as would be the case with any tariff law, its application of the principle of protec tion would develop faults of detail with time and experience. Nothing is more certain than that, even had not the Democratic party succeeded in 1892, a revision of the McKinley law at the hands of the party which enacted it would nevertheless in time be necessary. I am prepared to make this admission freely, and even to carry it so far as to state, speaking for myself, that if the present Congress could devise a reasonable measure, which would permit the continued employment of American labor and capital at living wages and fair profits, even though involving reductions, in some instances perhaps large reductions, from present rates of duties, with the understanding ll »*- was adeteruainatiiMi

of our dispute for a term of years, 1 would not oppose it. This is true. The Republican party should not allow itself to 5? put in the position of maintaining that the McKinley law is absolutely perfect and tod sacred for amendment. Circumstances have made it their line of battle at present, and as an honest expression and application of the doctrine of protection they do well to defend it. But there will be other protective tariffs after the McKinley tariff, and perhaps in some respects better ones. 'As Senator Quay well said, "the McKinley bill was not a principle; it was an experimental application of a theory.” What Republicans are fighting for is the principle of protection, not any particular application of it. If the Wilson bill should not pass it may yet devolve on a Republican Congress to revise and amend the McKinley law. In that case it will will be done on protective lines and in such a way as to benefit instead of destroying American . institutions. No tariff can be framed which will not develop some defects, and in the course of time require amendments. Senator Lodge’s Great Speech. Chicago Inter Ocean. The speech of Senator Lodge upon the tariff question is one of the few that merit careful study. It is not enough that it should be read; it should be conned, and should be preserved for frequent reference. The pressure upon our columns prevents us from giving more than a synopsis of it, but it is sure to be published as a campaign document, and if the Ameriaan Protective Tariff League have funds on hand it should be printed and sent to every voter in the land before political excitement runs high. Its argument is masterly, its tone is temperate, and its facts are unimpeachable. The trouble with the free trade people, college professors included, is that they have ceased to learn and never have begun to observe. They are bound in the meshes of philosophy that had served its purpose fifty years ago, and they do not see that it was a philosophy adapted to the needs of a country, as well as of a time, very different from that in which the American people live.. They fail to discern also that nowhere, under no circumstances, can political economy truly make claim to the conditions of a fixed science. It is, at best, a science of applied expediencies. But it is in vain that one attempts to argue with a theoretical free trader; he is one of the gentry who "know it all”. His creed is, "As it was in the beginning, is now’, and ever shall be, world without end,” and he fixes "the beginning” in the era of Adam Smith. The theoretical free traders, however, are a few and a feeble fol k. Votes are not determined by theoretical but by practical considerations. The British workman did not agitate for "free corn” —meaning free wheat —in 1846 because of his belief in the theories of Adam Smith, but because he knew that the population of Britain had become so great that the soil of the country could not feed the people of the country; so he agitated for "free corn,” which was a protectionist agitation, for it is protectionist policy to import freely all that a country cannot be made to produce for itself.

In like manner the British manufacturers did not vote for repeal of the tariff on manufactured goods because they believed it to be a scientific axiom that free goods leads to larger sales, but because they found that eighty years of rigorous pro* tection had given them manufacturing supremacy to such a degree that few manufactured goods were imported to their country, and because. they thought that other countries would follow their example,and because they knew that if other countries did follow thbir example the supremacy of Britain as a manufacturing nation was assured. But other nations did not follow their recent example. Other nations followed the older British example of protection, and by following it approximated the British results. The manufacturing supremacy of Britain is threatened by France and Germany in Europe, and in the department of iron it has been overthrown by America, which now is the greatest iron manufacturer of the world. History, to which free traders turn a deaf ear, tells that no nation, ancient or modern, has become a great manufacturing power by any other agency than that of protection. History tells us that wages are high or low in proportion as the profits ol manufacturers are great or small. History showsi that wages have fallen 15 per cent, in England during the past twenty years, and have increased greatly in the United States. History further tells us that the wage earners in all countries have sought, and wisely, to protect their pi o its by the. formation of unions and leagues that sought to obtain special advantages for their members. History tells us that Great Britain, long after abandonment of protection by tariff, has continued a form of protection by bounties to ships under the name of “mail subsidies,” and that such protection has insured her naval supremacy, as her centuries of tariffs fostered her manufacturing supremacy. History proclaims protection to be the natural law of nations and of ‘persons. And history is now tolling that the United States is suffering the effects of disobedience to this law. We regret that space prevents our publication of Senator I<odge’s admirable statistical illustrations of these truths, but console ourselves by the. certainty of their wide diffusion in pwcphlet form.