Rensselaer Republican, Volume 27, Number 27, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 March 1896 — SOME TARIFF TRUTHS. [ARTICLE]

SOME TARIFF TRUTHS.

D«<«r the Democrat* aa Infamous Bill —af Bala . ■ •' v The human mind does not always aee around corners with readiness. Hence a question which is part of the national life on all its sides, and on every side a vital part, does not get fully seen at one glance, nor by some minds ever. A shrewd writer begs to have it explained how the democratic party cap be hostile to protection while the onty tariff it has enacted for nearly 40 years is denounced by most democrats, and admitted by opponents, to be packed with protective duties, and wants to know if the democracy has not in fact been whipped out of its hostility to protection, so that the only issue has come to be one of details and expediency, and not of principle. Apparently there are many observers and 1 writers whose minds are mixed np in the same fashion—but not the minds of ; wage-earners. The democratic party is not an indilidual, with one mind to decide on point. It is a body composed of millions, whose shades of opinion and prejudice and purpose are also millions. But the overwhelming purpose recorded in the platform of the last national convention was to get rid of pro - teetive duties as far and as fast as possible, and this on the highest ground of principle—namely, pretended constitutional obligation and m theory of justice as between classes and sections. Nobody can honestly deny that this was the deliberate intention of the great majority of democratic, Voters, as of democratic workers and leaders at that time, and expressed their rooted convictions. however erroneous. There is

no evidence that the purpose of the great majority has changed in the least, though a minority large enough to beat the party in evety northern state refuses to break down its industries. The tariff thus framed is i,in some features nothing but an infamous bill of sale to various interests without regard to these or other industries, and this shameful favoritism waeptoof hot Of protective intentions, but of disbjouesty. In other features the tariff hi distinctly and effectively protective, because votes from certain manufacturing states could not otherwise be secured. In many others it is intentionally made to represent a weakened levee, some feet too low to keep out a flood, and therefore sure to be swept away when the flood cornea. In many other details It Is nakedly designed to Invite and encourage foreign Importations and to deprive home industies of protection. The two latter classes o? changes express the intention badly avowed by the party in its platform. "The otberduties express Its diKionesty, or its fright at the crushing defeats administered by the people. But the fact remains unaltered, that the democratic party'intends to go as far as it can and dfcre in the overthrow of protective duties, which the republican party in tends to perfect and maintain.—N. T. Trihune.