The Portland daily press., 1880-09-10
FRIDAY MORNING. SEPT. 10.

with Democratic Irishmen, without prompting
from any Republican. Its founders have been
influenced more, probably, by opposition to
the free trade plank in the Democratic plat
form than by any other consideration. They
are chiefly mechanics, and they see clearly
that if the duties which now protect American
industry should be repealed, the fourlshing
industries of Worcester would be crippled, If
not killed; that there would be work for only
q small portion of the men who are now en-
ployed, and that those who could find work
would have to be content with much smaller
wages than they now have; that America, so
Tar as manufactures are concerned, would be
only an anr.ax to the British empire, whose
cheaper capital and oppressed laborers would
produce goods at lower rate, and compel our
people to retire from competition or to accept
the meagre wages and degraded position which
are the lot of the British workman. 1t is use
less to talk to these people about the general
and ultimate benefits of free trade. If they
could be convinced that the general welfar of
the human race in the next generation would
be advanced by the universal adoption of free
trade, that would not move them a jot. 1t is
their duty, they say, to look after the comfort
and happiness of so much of this generation as
they are responsible for. The next generation
must deal with its own problems in its own
way.
But, although the free trade question has
had much influence with these Irish Republic
cans, they have not ove rlooked other consider
atoms, and they find many reasons why the
Republican party better deserves their conf
dence than the Democratic. The latter, though
it owes all its strength in the eastern States to
men of their race, and would be a contempti-
Bile minority without them in all the cities
which it now controls has been strangely mig
gardly in awarding to them the prizes Of polit-
cal fidelity. Local offices it has not always
been able to refuse, but of the higher and
more responsible positions much larger num-
Der have been assigned by the Republican
party to the few men of Irish birth and descent
in their ranks, than have been distributed by
ands OF Irishmen, without whose votes the
Democratic leaders would be officers without
an army. They have observed, too, that the
Republican party has always asserted the
worth and dignity of labor, while the Demo-
cratic party was always the staunch ally of
those falsely named Democrats at the South,
who maintained until the logic of facts and
the sword was too strong for them, that the
true fun 3tion of capital was to own labor
They recall the facts that the Republican
party passed the homestead law, giving every
citizen a farm if he chooses to take and Guilt
vate it, that the Republican administrations
have negotiated the naturalization treaties
whereby the governments of the old world
have given up their long cherished theory that
q subject could never transfer his allegiance,
that the Republican party has always favored
free and fair elections, and has provided the
only security for such elections that has ever
been given by law. These are not our argu-
ments. They are the reasons which study and
reflection have suggested to Irishmen seeking
political truth, and which they have addressed
to mon of their own blood, W tn what effect
the thirty-two members of the Irish Republic
can club as it now is, and the scores of others
who will probably be added to it before the
election, may tell.