Rock Island daily Argus., 1888-04-18

4
belonged to the saddest epoch in our national
history, the period between 1924 and 1861
| During that period slavery dominated our
national councils and guided the administa-
ton of our national affairs in hostility to
national interests, and in the interests of free
| trade twice threatened war. 1t was in the in
| terest of free trade that war was threatened in
support of the doctrine of notification, and
| il was in the interest of free trade that the
| country was involved for more than four
years in fratricidal war, the proportions OF
which were more gigantic than ever char
acterized civil war. The entire south knew
| that free trade was essential to the perpetuity
of slavery in the republic, and it should also
know that the logic that could defend free
| trade in country endowed with the bound
| less diversity of the elements of manufacture
and the immense supply of the forces for
their conversion which we enjoy, vanished
when slavery was abolished.
| Putting wool on the free list, he said, would
abolish sheep husbandry destroy the immense
capital embarked therein and impoversh
more thon l,OO0,000 men who own flocks or
are employed in their care. The transfer of
| tin plate and cotton-ties and other products
of coal and iron-ore to the free list and the
reduction of the duties on steel rails,
structural iron, and many other forms
of iron and steel sufficiently to with
draw protection from them and per-
init foreign producers to flood our markets
| would though il maintained existing duties
on coal and iron ore, close a majority of the
bitunnous coal fields and ore banks, which
were now giving employment to hundreds Of
thousands of laborers, not only in northern
states but in Maryland, Virginia, West Nir
ginia, North Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee,
and Alabama, and turn them adrift without
prospect of other employment elsewhere than
in cotton and coTniields.
Speaking of the duty on sugar, Kelley said:
"President Cleveland's free trade message by
its assumption that the duty was always
added to the cost not only Of imported conf
modities, but to the price of like commodi-
ties produced In this country, shows how
profoundly ignorant he is of economic sci
ence." To illustrate the absurdity of this
assumption he invited the presidents atten-
ton to the fact that though the duties i'm
posed by our government on sugar when re-
duced to ad valorem standards were never
so high as they now are, the price of sugar
was never so low in this country as it now is.
An incalculable element of value of the beet
and sorghum industry to the farmer is found
in the fact that both serve to regenerate
fields the fertility of which has been i'm
paired by the too constant growth of wheat
or corn The exhausted lands of Germany
and France have been reinvigorated by beet
culture and the manufacture of sugar. "And
| fail" said Kelly, "to see how congress
could infiict so fatal stroke ON the interests
of farmers and the industrial classes gen
orally as by declaring the culture of sugar
an outlaw in the United States by reducing
the duties upon it and molasses below an as
suredly protectivs rate.
an conclusion, l submit that it was by the
provisions of the law imposing taxes on dis
titled spirits that the whisky trust was called
into existence and enabled to accomplish the
revival of the despotism which pervaded the
southern states before the war, and that the
power of this trust and the combinations of
the Democratic politicians and the banking
influence of Kentucky can be broken only by
repeal of the internal taxes, the perpetuaton
of which is the issue presented to the American
people by the president in his free trade mes
sage, and by five southern gentlemen who
have dominated the councils of the commit
tee on ways and means and submitted this
bill to the house for your consideration. For |
myself | will stand for the protective system
and the maintenance of such rates of duties as
will insure the development of all the re
sources of the country, increase the number |
of its industries, and perpetuate its national |
independence, commercial and industrial az
well as political. This can not be done if the |
internal tax system is to be maintained, for |
the surplus is a condition that can not be per-
petuated with safety to our American insti- |
tutions. The purity of the government, the |
safety of business and the morals of tue pub
lie demand the abatement of the surplus by |
the repeal of the taxes from which it flows" |
Kelly spoke for two hours and when he
took his seat was loudly appauded and con
graduated by his party friends,