The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1884-10-31
AT THE oPERA-HoUsE.
Mr.. Blaine Again Presents the Great Issues
of the Campaign.

Mr.. Blaine Again Presents the Great Issues
of the Campaign.
Q NEW YORK, Oct. 30-From the Academy of
Music Mr.. Blaine and General Fremont were
driven to the Grand Opera-house where there
was another great crowd outside and very
large audience inside Upon Mr.. Blaine's ap
pearance there was a repetition on a smaller
scale, of the scene at the Academy. On being
introduced by the chairman of the evening, Mr.
Blaine delivered the following speech:
''rhe Republican party had its origin in a com,
bination of patriotic men. thirty years ago to
prevent the introduction of slavery into the Ter
ritores ofthe United States That battle was
waged with persistence and courage, and resisted
with a spirit of evil determination, and finally
eliminated in the election of Abraham Lincoln:
and resistance to his constitutional right to be
President ended in bloody war of four years
duration A party which began its existence
by resisting slavery, naturally and inevitably
became the protector Of free labor great cheer
ing; and with the question of slavery def
nitely ended by the issue of the civil struggle
the party became the representative, the EN-
bodiment of that industrial system which had
for its end and its aim the encouragement of
American industry Enthusiastic cheering. |
The step from relieving the black man from
slave labor was natural and easy to relieving the
white man from the degration OF that form of
labor which reduces him to the servitude of pov
erty Renewed cheering. Standing these
many years as the advocate of protective tariff
[cheersl, the results have been great enlarge
meut of our industrial activity a vast add-
ton to our national wealth. the encouragement of
American manufactures, the elevation and better
payment Of every man who earns his bread by
the sweat of his face. Great cheering Thirty
years of effort, twenty-four years of power, have
certainly yindicated the claims of the Repub
lcan party to general and to national confidence
and the leading question now to be decided by
the popular vote in all the States is whether that
industrial system and that financial system
which go hand in hand shall be superseded, and
whether the experiment of free trade, with
possible change in our currency system, shall be
resorted to by the voluntary consent of the
American people. Cries of Neverp never! |
Certainly there is no man intelligent enough to
reckon up his weeks wages Saturday night
who does not know that the only difference be
tween days pay for labor in the United States
and days pay for labor in the
British isles is that which is produced
by and results from the protective tariff
Great and prolonged cheering. So that the
American laborer or mechanic who voluntarily
casts his ballot for the elevation to pOwer of a
party committed to free trade casts his ballot
for the reduction of his own wages Enthus-
astic cheering desire to repeat here what
have said more than once elsewhere, that all the
voluntary associations which laboring men and
mechanics resort to in their trades unions and
like cooperative efforts well enough and de
S.fdolt III many rtbpcctS dS bCy dIci LuteIlllt
certainly with no word of criticism from me
applause are yet entirely Intellectual as a
means of upholding the scale of American
wages, unless back of them be that
protection and support which comes from
the levying of duties on the scale embodied in
the protective tariff Cries of Good good,
and cheers. Here at home, the trades unions
may protect you from the unjust exactions of
an employer; but how, in an era of free trade
can it protect you from the importation of cheap
fabrics from the old world which must necessa
rily reduce your own, or probably compel the
abandonment of the rival manufactures in this
country! What desire to enforce and impress
upon men of enterprise, and men of prudence is
that the only safeguard is in holding that indus
trial system which prevents ruinous competition
in the fabrics they are making, and that
financial system which, when dollar
is earned enables it to be paid
with one hundred cents. Loud applause And
it is the peculiar merit of the Republican party
that, while from its hostility to slave labor witt
its natural consequence, protection to free labor.
it has earned the right to the suffrage and sup
port of the great industrial class, it has not been