Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1888-05-24
lContinued from second page. ]

workingman can not exist with the scant,
pittance which is paid to labor abroad. An,
worst of all would be the idleness and con
sequent poverty, misery, and crime whicl
could not but follow the glutting of ou
markets with cheap foreign goods. and tn,
| consequent expulsion from them of American
| productions.
The FARMER.
And where would this leave the farmer
him TO whom, together with the laborin,
man. every demagogue appeals, in way tina
is an insult TO his intelligence? Now, l de
sire to promote by every rational an,
honest means the prosperity of the farmer
and workingman. First, because have been
both, and know how to sympathize with them
and, secondly, because l regard the farmers
as the great conservative element of our peo
pie, and because the workingman is he whose
strong arms and sturdy will turn our crude
resources into materials for the comfort and
happiness of mankind. But the professional
farmer and laborer, he who with hands as
soft as kittens ear, never having done a
days manual labor in his life. and W ho knows
no; enough about farming to set hen
who goes about giving us theories upon labor
and shouting his love of the workingman and
farmer from the house-top, is not a character
that inspires my confidence or commands my
respect.
Our HOME MARKEr.
The farmer wants the best market for his
produce and the workingman wants the same
for his toll. They have it now at home but
whatever gives away the American market to
the foreigner, as free trade proposes to do, is
inimical to both farmer and toiler, and to
every producer of whatever pursuit in the
land.
Yes, our home market is the best in the
world the best for the farmer, because lie
sells in it to those whose earnings enable
them to pay him the most for his products /;
the hest for the laborer, because he works for
those whose profits enable them to pay him
the most for his toil; ; the best for the manu-
facturer, because he therein sells his goods
to more thrifty nation of consumers than
can anywhere else be found. This home
market with all its unrivalled advantages the
Democratic free-traders propose to open and
share with all the producers upon the globe
who choose to come to it to sell their pauper-
made goods. And will they not come to it !?
Ay, they are looking through and over our
fence of protection to it as eagerly as hungry
ilocks and herds ever looked from barren
pasture lands into fields of rich bluegrass and
clover.
The protectionists say that these rich fields
are our own; that their fertile acres are for
our own people, those who live under our
flag, fight our battles, pay our taxes, develop
our resources, enhance our industries, and
contribute to the greatness and glory of our
country. We say to the honest and indus
trious foreigner, You may come in through
fha trnt nd nnI uifh us hrf Nnr hal mot
reach over or through and gather our sub
stance while you remain on the other side of
the fence, and are neither with us nor of us
nor for us"
The Democratic free-trader says, on the
other hand, it costs something in the way of
taxes to keep up this fence, and while we are
all benefited by the enjoyment of
our great advantages we are not all
be lefited alike. Some who are more indus
trous than others get more than an equal
share of these blessings; therefore we will
throw down the fence and let all the world
reach in and despoil our fair fields of pros
perity.
Our CARRYING TRADE.
And gentlemen who have for years refused
to vote even the smallest subsidies to our
shipping have the temerity to say that ppo-
lection has demolished our carrying trade.
Somebody the other day quoted James Rus
sell Lowell upon this subject That gentle
man is not good authority in New England.
He began life pretty well, but, as George
Francis Train once said of Lord Brougham,
'IIe has been sort of cucumber politician
best when he was green" He has become
so galvanized with the notions of Old Eng
land that New England can hardly recognize
that he is one of her sons, and is beginning
to be sorry for the fact that he is.
1t is not the tariff that has affected our
carrying trade unfavoraby. Its decline be-
gan in 1865, long before the present tariff
was instituted. Afterwards, from 1861 to
1865, our ships were swept off the ocean by
Democratic cruisers of English build, and
Democratic hostility to protective legislation
for our foreign carrying trade has completed
its ruin Our domestic carrying trade, which
has had the benefit of protection, is in a fairly
hourishing condition. But even that our
Free Trade Democracy wish to surrender to
the foreigner.
Gentlemen tell us that great cry comes
up from the people for it. And whom do
they call the people? Why, certain Free
Trade newspapers, members of the Golden
Club college doctrinaires, and Democratic
politicians. But what of the Knights of
Labor? Have they been at the doors of the
Capitol urging the passage of the Mills bill,
that great work of the greatest committee of
the House? No. On the contrary, their pro-
tests against it have been many and loud
What of the merchants, and workingmen, and
farmers and all the men who earn their bread
in the sweat of their faces? Where are their
petitions? In the petitiOn-boxes, presenting
picture of the disaster which they believe
this bill will work.
A few men anxious to surrender our mark
cts as they are to give up our shp-yards, our
fisheries, and our manufactures to foreign
possession, and few British inspired news
papers, and food of circulars from the
Golden Club, make great noise and it is
called the voice of the people. They will
hear the voice of the people the real living,
actual people of this country, if this bill shall
pass, when the working man, deprived OF
labor or shorn in the rate of his wages, when
the farmer, seeing the departure of his home
market; when the manufacturer, look
ing upon his untenanted mills wher
the chant, realizing in diminished
returns for his goods, the pinching poverty
of his customers shall let their ballots speal
at the polls.
Their petitions are here now. They have
come up from the wOrkngmen in almos
every industry in the country, but they hav'
been unheeded by the majority of the Way
and Means Committee, and they are not suci
workingmen as Henry George; not the theo
retical workingmen; not they who swell nj
and cry out, Look at me; big Injun work
ingman; workingmen's great friend and ad
vocate, but practical workmen who put thei
hands to labor, who do work and not talk
simply, and who know from the best of al
teachers, hard experience, what the working
mans interest is. And they do know it bet
ter than any free-trade theorist or colleg
doctrinaire can tell them. They have, man.
of them, known enough to come to this pro
tected land of plenty, and those who kne'
not before are fast learning what it is tina
gives them houses here whereas they ha'
none in the lands they came FROM what give
them comfort and education for their chill
dren here while they had none there. The,
know it is not the free-trade Democracy
which, while with loud speech pretending L
be the laboring mans friend, has for genera
tions held him down under the heel of abso
lutte despotism in one section of the countr.
and deluded him with specious promises ap'
| pretensions in the other, but that great Re