Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 19, Number 46, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 February 1898 — PRESIDENT M’KINLEY SPEAKS IT. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

PRESIDENT M’KINLEY SPEAKS IT.

Uses Plate Words in Addressing the National Association of Manufacturers.

PRESIDENT M’KINLEY, in addressing the Nationnl Association of Manufacturers in New York, said: “I recall that as Governor of the State of Ohio it was my pleasure to welcome you to the city of Cincinnati on Jan. 22, 1895, at the initial convention of the Manufacturers’ Association. I well remember the occasion. Your speeelies and resolutions at the first convention were directed mainly to the question of how to regain what you had lost in the previous years, or, if that was found impossible, then how to stop_further loss. But your object now, ns I gather it, is to go out and possess what you have never had before. You want to extend, not your notes, but your business. I sympathized with your purposes then; lam in full accord with your intentions now. I ventured to say at the gathering referred to, ns reported in your published proceedings, speaking both for your encouragement and from a profound conviction: ‘This great country cannot be permanently kept in a state of relapse. I believe we will reoccupy the field temporarily lost to us and go out to the peaceful conquest of new and greater fields of trade and commerce. The recovery will come slowly, perhnps, but it will come, and when it does, we will be steadier and will better know how to avqid exposure hereafter.’ I have abated none of the faith I then-ex-pressed, and you seem to have regained yours. “Nationnl policies can encourage industry and commerce, but it remains for the people to project and carry them on. If these policies stimulate industrial development and energy, the people can bo safely trusted to do the rest. The Government, however, is restricted in its power to promote industry. It can nid commerce, but not create it. It can widen and deepen its rivers, improve its harbors and develop its great national waterways, but the ships to sail and the traffic to carry the people must supply. The Government can raise revenues by taxation in such a way as will discriminate iu favor of domestic enterprises, but it cannot establish them. It can make commercial treaties, opening to our manufacturers and agriculturists the ports of ojfcer nations. It can enter into reciprocal arrangements to exchange our products with those of other countries. It can aid our merchant marine by encouraging our people to build ships of commerce. It can assist in every lawful manner private enterprise to unite the two oeenns with a great canal. It can do all these things and ought to do them, but with nil this accomplished the result will still bo ineffectual unless supplemented by the energy, enterprise and industry of the people. It is they that must build and operate the factories, furnish ships and cargoes for the canal and the rivers and the seas. It Is they who must find the consumers and obtain trade by going forth to win It. “Much profitable trade is still unenjoyed by our people because of their present insufficient facilities for reaching desirable markets. Much of it is lost because of a of information and ignorance of the conditions and needs of other nations. We must know just what other people want before we can supply their wants. We must understand exactly how to reach them with least expense if we would enter into the most advantageous business relations with them. The ship requires the shipper, but the shipper must have assured promise that his goods will have a sale when they reach their destination. It is a good rule If buyers will not come to us for us to go to them. It is our duty to make American enterprise nnd industrial ambition ns well ns achievement terms of respect- and praise, not only at home but among the family of nations the world over. For Currency Reform. “There is another duty resting upon the national government—‘to coin money a nd regulate the value thereof.’ This duty requires that our Government shall regulate the value of its money by the highest standards of commercial honesty and national honor. The money of the United States is and must forever bo unquestioned and unassailable. If doubts remain they must be removed. If weak places are discovered they must be strengthened. Nothing should ever tempt us —nothing ever will tempt us—to scale down the sacred debt of the nation through a legal technicality. Whatever may be the language of the contrnet, the United States will discharge nil its obligations in the currency recognized ns the best throughout the civilized world nt the times of payment. Nor will we ever consent that the wages of labor or its frugnl saviugs thall be scaled down by permitting payment in dollars of less value that* the dollars accepted ns the best iu every enlightened nation of the earth. V' “Under existing conditions our citizens cannot be excused if they do not redouble their efforts to secure such financial legislation ns will place their honorable intentions beyond dispute. All those who represent, as you do, the great conservative and the progressive business interests of the country owe It not only to themselves but to the people to insist upon the settlement of this great question now, or else to face the alternative that it must be again submitted for arbitration at the polls. . Command from th* People. “This is our plain duty to more than 7,000,000 voters, who fifteen months ago won a grent political battle on the issue, among others, that the United States Government would not permit a doubt to exist anywhere concerning the stability nnd integrity of its currency or the inviolnbiHty of its obligations of every kind. That is my interpretation of that victory. Whatever effort, therefore, is required to make the settlement of this vital question clear nnd conclusive for all time we are bound in good conscience to undertake and if possible realize. That is our commission—our present charter from the people. It will not suttl;e for citizens nowadays to say simply that they are iu favor of sound money. That is not enough. The people’s purpose must be given the vitality of public law. Better an honest effort with failure than the avoiding of so plain and commanding a duty. “Ilalf-heartedness never won a battle. Nations nnd parties without abiding principles nnd stern resolution to enforce them, even if it costs a continuous struggle to do so and temporary sacrifice, are never in the highest degree successful lenders in the progress of mankind. For us to attempt nothing in the face of the present fallacies nnd tiie constant effort to spread them is to weuken the forces of sound money for their battles of the future. The financial plonk of the St. Louis platform is still ns commanding upon Republicans and those who served with them iu the last campaign ns on the day it was adopted nnd promulgated. Happily, the tariff part of the platform has already been ingrafted into public statute. Hut that other plunk, not already builded into our constitution, is of binding force upon nil of us. What is it? ••‘The Republican parly is unreservedly for sound money. It caused the enactment of the law providing for the resumption of specie payments in 1H79» since then (very dollar hns been ns good ns gold. Wo are unalterably opposed to every measure calculated to debase ou» currency or impair the credit of our country. We are therefore opposed to the free coinage of silver except by international agreement with the leading commercial nations of the world, which we pledge ourselves to promote, nnd until such agreement enn be obtained the existing gold standard must bo preserved. AH our silver nnd paper currency must Ik* maintained nt parity with gold, nnd we favor nil measures designed to inniutain inviolably the obligations of the United Btntes, and all our money, whether coin or paper, nt the present standard, the standard of the most enlightened nations of the party now in power, nnd who are still anxiously waiting for the exeeution of their free and omnipotent will by those of us who hold commissions from that rente tribunal. The country Is now emerging from trying conditions. It is only lust beginning to recover from the depression In certnin lines of business, long continued and altogether unparalleled. Progress, therefore, will naturally be slow, but let us not be Impatient. Rather let us exercise a just patience, and one which In time Will surely bring its own. high reward.

HANGS HIS BANNER ON THE OUTER WALL. —Chicago Record.