Morning journal and courier., 1888-11-03
ooLoRED RRPUBL1CANs.

HalI-A Vigorous Address by Judge
 EJoseph Sheldon on the Issues.
 &The Colored Republican club held Q rous-
 ing rally at their headquarters in Days hall
 last evening. President Bonner presided and
 introduced the speakers of the evening, Judge
 Joseph Sheldon of this city.
 Judge Sheldon's remarks were in part upon
 the Mills bill. He said:
 Look at the Mills bill. It proposes to
 bring into the country certain articles like
 wool without paying anything for the privi-
 lege.
 established lines of trade with all the great sheep raising places on the globe. They
 have lines of steamships supported by the British government running to all such places; they have their agents and bankers living there, advancing money to owners of foeks and getting lien on the wool before it is clipped; the title to all the wool of all the great sheep walks of the world is firmly in the hands of these London merchants. They have their auction sales four times year, continuing thirty days at time. Through these auction sales the title to sub stsntially all the wool of the world, except | that of this country is passed. No one can ! wrest this trade from them except by extend ed time and great effort and expense. It is eighty-six years since General David Humphrey of this city brought here the first | fine wool sheep from Spain. He became the pioneer of sheep raising and the woolen in- | dustry and gained the name from Henry ! Clay of the father of the American system of | home manufactures.
 It has taken all this time to bring the bus mess of sheep husbandry to it's present con- \ dition. If once destroyed 1t could not be re- ! replaced in less than twenty or thirty years. You are asked to believe that when these British merchants can send this rival product | L IA -sG lr1fSA Gua | sell it so cheap as to cut the throat of every sheep between the two oceans, and you have | to depend upon them for the supplies you ! need in peace and in war, that they will con- \ tinue to sell us wool then as cheap as they ! do when they are destroying our American | sheep by their bastard cheapness. No wool \ used is taken in by any such shallow pre- tense, Scarcely a manufacturer of woolen goods in this country but is hotly against so destrcutive policy as this. In war domes- | tic supplies of wool are as needful as domes- \ tic gunpowder.
 The Mills bill will be seen just az 1t is by hanging it up as historic picture alongside | of just two other recent ones.
 | Look at the Geneva award of fifteen mil lions of dollars. Hang that up as one pio- | ture and reflect on what it means. It means \ that that sum was the price Great Britain \ paid for trying to conquer this country by | dividing 1.-the North from the South-in the great rebellion.
 Look at the millions of leaflets and tracts | sent out eight years ago all over the West. ' Hang them up as a second picture. They \ were not Sackville West letters. They were ! Golden club tracts-one Mongredien the au- | thor and they showed the great West under as with blizzard of these free trade arguments, entreaties, explanations of how the farmers | of the great West were being robbed by the ! merciless exactions of the tariff.
 When the election came every leahet sown | seemed to have turned into Republican bal ! lot for protection, for mills and factories to ! come among them and be part and parcel | of their great commonwealths.
 This was an appeal to the West to revolt against the East, the agricultural from the ! manufacturing States-to divide and conquer each section in turn. They failed and failed 1 ignominiously, failed as Sackville-West fail- ed, failed as the British rebel cruisers failed, failed as the Confederate armies failed and failed when they failed.
 Now comes the companion picture in the ! Mills bill. They turn now in wrath as full of spleen as John Randolph was when he said he hated the tariff SO that he would go @ mile any time to kick 8 sheep.
 | They say in effect of the sheep rAisers in the West, since they turned deaf ear to us | in 1880, we will now unite with the free traders of the South; the one hundred and ffty>three brigadier generals who are already counted out to vote for Cleveland and with the manufacturers of the East and we will out the throat of every sheep in the whole land Perhaps when the wool raisers have had such discipline as that for while we can then turn to them and show how greedy and selfish these eastern kings of the woolen factories are and how they of the West can get even with the East only by 8 1 cyclone from the Northwest of which MT. Fairchild warned us, demanding free trade ! in greater measure than we have ever had or ! imagined. In vain is the net spread in sight of ! any bird. It is the action of eight years ago ! reversed. It is a proposition again to divide us East from West, manufacturing from az | ricultural States, and conquer each in turn. As they failed in the rebellion and paid for their failure, as they failed in their appeal to the farmers of the West eight years ago, so will they fail in their present appeal to the ! bat-eyed sel6shness here, to which they be- ! lieve they can successfully appeal. Let us reject it we would any other deep laid snare of the devil.
 The manufacturers of wool counsel you to reject it, for 1t will put first them and after- I wards you into the meroiless grip of the I banded merchants of London. The watchers on the walls of your political fortress counsel you to reject it. Your own common sense and your fear of danger counsel you to reject
 it, and you will not disregard such counsel. But this Is not the worst of this bill. It puts an actual bounty on some foreign wool | and does not leave Americans to work sim. ply on an equality v wita men who
 have only ten -5srfs day for wages, but putaa us 30 per cent. below them. We are confronted by a condition and { not by theory" says Mir. Cleveland. That l ''condition" makes free trade in wool operate I as bounty of more than 30 per cent. on the wool of India. A Boston merchant with | $1 ,000 in gold can buy silver rupees in Lon ! don, delivered in Calcutta, equal to about | $1 300, and can buy just as much wool with F f loads ship with wool bought at that rate, | and there is no protective law to slip that | $500 into the treasury of the United States | by means of 30 per cent duty, the Boston I merchant will go every time to the market of India for his wool and get the bounty the present Condition" gives him.
 So long as this can be done free trade in wool operates as 6 positive bounty on the wool of India, so that this item of free trade becomes simply marvellous folly or stu pendons crime. We need at least duty of 30 per cent. to neutralize that bounty grow- ing out of what Mir. Manning called "the disIocation" of silver.
 But the Mills bill has another side It substitutes for fixed duty one that an im- porter angry with the tariff anyway can
 make smaller by swearing down the price of
 his good in the place whence he imports them.
 This is to make corruption reek with false
 hood and perjury and an indirect destruction
 of the settled policy of the nation.
 The whole bill, from the section which re-
 peals Gall laws which impose any special tax
 es upon manufacturers of stills, retail dealers
 in liquors and retail dealers in malt hquors''
 to that which delivers us to the British mer-
 chants in wool, is an act to debase and prac-
 tically enslave the Workingmen of America
 aud it will receive their hearty condemnation
 next Tuesday.
 A Distinguished Guest.