Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1884-07-12
Hon. Galusha A. Grow.
EXTRACT FROM SPEECH DELIVERED By HIM,
THE llTH. BEFORE THE UNION LEAGUE AT
CHESTER. PENN.

THE llTH. BEFORE THE UNION LEAGUE AT
CHESTER, PENN.
OF all methods for collecting revenue the
Custom House il the cheapest for the govern
meBt and the most convenient and easiest for
payment by the citizen; and il is the only way
BY which legislation can be of any real benefit
TO the industries Of the country.
Abolish all tariff laws and the labOrers OF
our country must then stand unaided and
alone in their competition with that labor Of
the world, where homeless poverty is the sole
heritage # the sons of toll.
Collecting revenue by duties is in reality
collecting it from incomes based on expendi-
lures in living. This method while stripped
of the obectional features of a specific income
or direct tax-of being inquisitoral as to the
private business of Observation-Disclosures
the burthens of government upon those most
able to bear them, and 10 whom in justice
thew belong.
In discussing the Morrill, Tariff bill in Con-
gress, May I. 1860, my views as to the proper
adjustment of a tariff and its influence on the
industries of the country are as clearly ex-
pressed in the following extract as it is pos
sible for me to do it:
"If we produce the commodities for which the spe-
sie IL exchanged, the advantage of making the ex-
a
retain tor the purposes OF trade reliable clrcui2t-
ing medium, it saves to the producer of each CON-
modify the cost Of double transportation. For in
stance, you manufacture a shoe which costs one
dollar. II another dollar for its transportation
abroad You exchange IL there at its cost price of
two dollars for some commodity costing two dollars,
the transportation of which, back, costs one dollar
So the article you get in exchange for the shoe costs
three dollars, requiring three shoes TO pay for il;
when. ii it had been produced at the door of the shoe
manufacturer at no greater cost than at the place Of
ill., fun .bo haVa hea oil for
It, and the cost of transportation and the labor Of
shoe would have been saved to the COZ sumner.
Thus the consumer of each would be benefited TO the
amount Of Onethird of the cost OF the article.
Whatever productions, therefore,
a nation has natural advantages or facilities for pro-
ducing, 1t is of national interest and concern that il
should supply Its own Market on the principle that
you bny cheapest where you pay easiest. Whenever
the productions OF anatiOn's industry are retained
within It's own limits, the people thereof are more
prosperou than they could be If they expended their
means in paying Tor the trans poraOn of their own
products abroad and the transportation OF foreign
products in exchange instead OF saving that expense
by producing at home
therefore, II is better, in my judgment, for coun-
try to produce within itself, far climate and
soil will permit, the commodities for which gold and
silver are exchanged, instead of sending them to
other countries in payment for such commodities.
While collecting the revenue
necessary for the support Of the government, wise
craftsmanship would give to the indu trial interests
OF the country all the advantages that could be justly
furnished them under 1t. Justice 10 the tax payer
requires that the highest scale of duties should be
imposed upon those articles regarded as Injuries,
and the lowest upon the necessary and indi.pensa.
Bile articles Of life; and in doing this, justice to the
labor OF the country requires discrimination in
favor of the products Ut own industries, and
pecally Of those in which we possess natural advan-
tages 1t is in this way only that we can guard our
industry against the unjust competition OF capital
and experience, tostered for ages by countervaling
duties and legislative restrictions"
The republican party in its earliest forma-
ton enbodies as the very essence of its ex-
istence personal rights, manhood citizenship
and the best interests of the iaboring class
Its great champions and chosen standard
bearers, have been in their own lives the per-
sonal representatives Of labor and its trials
Lincoln, Wilson. Greeley, Wade and Gar
field, and host of their illustrious compeers,
in youth and early manhood earned their daily
bread by their daily toll in the workshop and
the field or along the highways of commerce.
James G. Blaine and John A. Logan, two
Of the illustrious compeers of these illustri-
Gus men. have been selected to bear the
standard of the republican party over the
political battle fields of the country to a
browning victory on the ides of November
next Each the architect Of his own fortune,
unaided by wealth or family influence, they
have by their own inherent force of character
achieved honorable distinction among their
fellow The dwellers in the most OBJ
scure hamlet of the land have no occasion to
ask who is Blaine and Logan. The record of
their lives is a part of the history of the re-
public for twenty-five wears in one of its most
eventful eras.
A quarter of a century of success
full administration, beginning in the long
roll of one of the most gigantic wars of
history, is the conclusive evidence of the
ability of the Republican party to manage the
affairs of government wisely and well.
Among its measures of legislation is a
BANKING system. which furnishes a circulate
ing medium OF uniform value. equal every
where to gold, and under which during the
twenty years of its existence no bill-holder
has ever lost a dollar by bank failures and
while the system lasts, never can, unless the
people of the United States prove false to
their pliRhted honor in the payment of the
national debit is a system of revenue protec-
ton under which almost half of the national
debt has already been paid, and the indus
tries OF the country have dev eloped from an
annual production of three thousand millions
of dollars in 1860 to over eight thousand
millions in 1880.
These are some of the fruits of the legis-
lative and administrative policy of the repub-
lcan party-and its mission is not yet ended.
That will end when every child born on
American soil can in its mature childhood
read the constitution of the United States and
the Sermon on the Mount.
As political organization the mission OF
the republican party will end when public
opinion recognizes the equal rights of all
men before the law, strong enough every
where to protect the humblest and feeblest
in the endowment of all the guaranteed rights
and privileges of American citizenship.
Then and not till then will the mission of the
republican party end.
Called into existence to prevent the extern
sion of slavery into the Territories of the
Union, il became in the provdences of God
the instrument to save the life of the repub-
lie in the hour of its direst peril, and to blot
forever from the continent the institutions of
human bondage.
The great central ideas of its existence are
stamped in indelible characters upon the pill
lars of the age, and are written in the organic
law there to remain as long as the republic
lives.