Bellows Falls times. [volume] (Bellows Falls, Vt.) 1856-1965, 1876-07-07

nearly 1000 articles, as masterpiece OF
injustice, inequality and false pretence
1t yields dwindling, not a yearly ris.
ing revenue; it has impoverished many
industries to subsidize few it prohib.
its imports that might purchase the pro.
ducts of American labor it has degrad.
ed American commerce from the first to
an inferior rank on the high seas it has
cut down the sale of American manu-
factures at home and abroad, and de-
pleted the returns of American agricul.
ture, an industry followed by half our
people; it costs the people five times
more than it produces to the Treasury,
obstructs the processes of production
and wastes the fruits of labor; it pro-
notes fraud and fosters smuggling en-
riches dishonest officials and bankrupts
honest merchants. We demand that all
Custom House taxation shall be only for
revenue.
Reform is necessary in the scale of
public expenses, federal, state and mu-
nicipal. Our federal taxation has swol.
len from s60,0OO,OO0, gold, in 1860, to
$3.50, 100000, currency, in 1870, or in a
decade from less than So per head to
more than S18 per head. Since the
peace the people have paid to their tax
gatherers more than twice that sum for
the Federal Government alone. We de-
mand vigorous frugality in every de-
partment and from every officer of the
Government.
WASTE OF PUBLIC LANDS.
Reform is necessary to put stop to
the profigate waste of public lands and
their diversion from actual settlers by
the party in power, which has squan-
dered two hundred millions of acres up.
on railroads alone, and out of more than
thrice that aggregate, has disposed of
less than sixth directly to the tillers of
the soil.
A BLOW AT THE CHINESE.
Reform is necessary to correct the
omissions of the Republican Congress
and the errors of our treaties and our
diplomacy, which have stripped our fell
low citizens of foreign birth and kindred
race, recrossing the Atlantic, of the
shield of American citizenship, and
have exposed our brethren of the Pacific
coast to the incursions of race not
sprung from the same great parent stock,
and in fact now by law denied citizen
ship through naturalization as being nei-
ther accustomed to the traditions of
progressive civilization nor exercised in
liberty under equal laws.
We denounce the policy which thus
discards the liberty-loving German and
tolerates the revival of the Coolie trade
in Mongolian women, imported for i'm
moral purposes, and Mongolian men,
hired to perform servile labor contracts,
and demand such modification of the
treaty with the Chinese Empire, or such
legislation by Congress within consti.
tutional limitation, as shall prevent the
further importation or immigration of
the Mongolian race
THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS
Reform is necessary and can never be
affected but by making it the controlling
issue of the elections, and lifting it above
the two false issues with which the office
holding class and the party in power
seek to smother it the false issue with
which they would enkindle sectional
strife in respect to the public schools, of |
which the establishment and support be-
longs exclusively to the several states,
and which the democratic party has
cherished from their foundation and re.
solved to maintain without partiality or
preference for any class, sect or creed,
and without contributions from the
Treasury to any of them, and the false
issue by which they seek to light anew
the dying embers of sectional hate be-
tween kindred peoples, once estranged
but now united in one indivisible Re
public and common destiny.
CIVIL SERVICE REFORM DEMANDED.
Reform is necessary in the civil SER
vice. Experience proves that efficient
conduct of the governmental
business is not possible if its civil SER
vice be subject to change at every elec-
ion, be prize fought for at the ballot
box, be brief reward of party zeal, in
tead of posts of honor assigned for
proved competency and held for fidelity
u the public employ that the dispens-
ng of patronage should neither be tax
lpon the time of all our public men nor
he instrument of their ambition. Here
gain, professions falsifed in the per-
ormance attest that the party in power {
an work out no practical or salutary I
eform. 7
Reform is necessary even more in the 1