Belmont chronicle. [volume] (St. Clairsville, Ohio) 1855-1973, 1878-09-19

and the year closing with the last of July q |
balance in our favor of more than 210 millions !
of dollars.
And this upon no meager account, for We
bought in 1S77-S S437, ,051, ,533 worth Of goods
from abroad. But we sold of our products,
and largely of American manufactures
abroad, S694, SS4, 200 worth. If a farmer
finds at the end of the year that he has been
selling from the products of his farm more
than he has been buying, he accounts himself
well off, and the year a prosperous one. This
nation under the policy of the Republican
party, has come to q point in its history,
when as people we are selling far more than
we are buying. This surplus is all added year
after year to the aggregate wealth OF the coun-
try. Another showing is equally favorable to
US. While it was estimated only a few years
ago that we paid $55, ZOO, 900 of interest an
nually upon our bonds that were held abroad,
we now pay on the same account, to foreign
bondhOlders, not above twelve or fifteen mil
lions of dollars per annum, thus showing that
the interest upon our public debt is being paid
mainly to our own people and no longer goes
abroad. The interest upon the debt is no
longer sapping the life blood from the Treas
y
home to return in circfing currents from the
Treasury TO the people and from the people
to the Treasury. Another matter, you are
told by the Democratic platform makers and
Democratic speakers, that the people of this
coultry are oppressed by federal taxation. |
deny totally and wholly the proposition; we
collect, 1t is true, in round numbers, two
hundred and forty millions annually from va
rious sources to meet the demands of the
United States Treasury. In the neighborhood
of one hundred millions of it goes to pay in
terest on the public debt, thirty millions of it
goes to satisfy the demands of the pensions of
the late war, and the remainder to defray the
ordinary and extraordinary expenses of the
Government. But of this enormous sum of
money, thus collected, how much you pay?
Look around and answer the question for
yourselves, where do you pay federal taxes
and how do you pay them?
have already told you the great reduction
in the prices of the standard articles of cloth
ing and food consumed by your families. You
buy drillings, cotton goods, and woolen goods
cheaper than ever before in your lives. And
yet we are raising revenues for the support of
the Government by taxing these articles when
imported from abroad. We get about 130
millions of dollars of our revenue from our
tariff schedule, some from foreign iron and
foreign glass, from foreign cotton and woolen
goods, and while the levying of this revenue
protects our own home industries it adds but
little, if anything to the burdens of the peo-
pie in the way of taxation. And assert here
that the only tax that can in any way be con-
sidered burden to the people of Bridgeport
is the enhanced value of liquors and tobacco
in their various forms by reason of internal
revenue taxation.
THE REPUBLICAN PARTY THE FRIEND OF THE
LABoRER.
Perhaps there never was a Government on
the face of the earth before, required to raise
so enormous a revenue as ours, that touched
so lightly the pockets of the laboring classes.
1t has been the policy of the Republican party
to tax, as lightly as possible, the necessaries
of lite, and to levy the revenue upon luxuries
rather. believe that a little more courage, a
little more patience will bring us out safely.
1t may be that the Republican party has made
mistakes, and il undoubtedly has, in the man.
agement of the great economic questions that
it has been called upon to meet in the last fif-
teen years, but its legislation has been in the
direction of honesty, of honest money and of
the credit of the nation. The Democratic
party on the other hand has been carping
fault-fnder for almost 20 years. 1t has stood
ready at any time since the close of the war,
in the west and in the south, to abandon the
credit of the nation and the money of the peo-
pie, for the widest schemes of the most Wis
lonaIy advocate of ''absolute" or fiat"
money
We have passed through the darkest hour,
and light is already shining upon our fore i.
heads We can redeem this dollar of Lincoln
and of Chase in good, round gold and silver
coin. Let US stand together until that is done,
as l believe it will be done next January, when
every dollar of the Government money and
every dollar OF bank paper will be convertible,
at the desire of the holder, into coin. | be-
lieve we will have that condition of things,
and have faith in the President of the United
States. have faith that the Resumption act
will not be repealed in the next Congress. l
have faith that even if a Congress shall be
elected that will so far forget the spirit Of the
Constitutions and the lessons of the fathers,
as in time of prosperity and peace, when we
are collecting annually more revenue than is
needed to meet the ordinary and extraordinary
expenditures of the Government and when the
balance of trade is more than two hundred and
fifty millions of dollars annually in our favor,
if, say, that Congress shall so far forget the
lessons of history as to launch again upon the
sea of iIredeemable paper currency, believe
that MI. Hayes, remembering the language OF
President Lincoln, and of the Supreme Court
of the United States in the legal tender de-
cisions, will interpos. rs he las right, and
as l believe he will be bound to do, his veto
against any such wild and visionary schemes.
believe we will have resumption, that coin
will appear again among the people, and if the
Democratic party or any other party shall
come into power hereafter, and in time of pro-
found peace, attempt to overthrow what was
the settled policy of the Government for more
than half a century, and what the Republican
party has struggled up to during fifteen years
of terrible trial. believe that the people will
overturn them with voice so loud and so po-
tent, that they will never again be resurected
from the public condemnation they will de-