Los Angeles daily herald., 1888-08-05
POLITICAL THUNDER.
Democracy's First Gun in
Indiana.
CAMPAIGN FORMALLY OPENED.
Senator voorhees, Exposes a Peck
sniffian Candidate "A ROus-
ing Speech.

sniffian Candidate "A ROus-
ing Speech.
Associated Press Dispatches to the HERALD,
TERRE HAUTE, Ind, August 4.-The
Democrats of this city and vicinity had a
mass meeting tonight, and Senator
Voorhees, made the opening speech in
the Democratic campaign in Indiana. He
said in part:
the Government set in motion by the
Republican managers has been to swell
and bloat the gains of the rich and in
crease the burdens of the poor. The
Republican conspiracy to fasten the
fangs OF the money power in the strug-
Cling body of American labor, took ills
first growth when in authorizing legal
tender currency in 1862 the greenback,
theaimmortal and glorious greenback,
was Disseminated against and made non
receivable for duties on imports and for
interest on the bonded debt. No finan-
cial measure was ever more oppressive
and destructive to the rights of labor in
it's results than this.
The Senator declared that this act en-
abled the bullionists of Wall street to
realize profit, on "naked speculation"
with bonds and currency of the Nation,
of nearly one thousand million dollars.
Continuing, he said l do not believe
any other people on the globe would have
submitted, unless restrained by force, to
the monstrous act of Congress of March
1869. By one dishonest stroke of dis
honest pen, guided and held by the dis
honest leaders of the great party, the
debt which labor has to pay was swelled
25 per cent.
The Speaker then quoted letter writ
ten by John Sherman in 1870, wherein
Sherman said: 1 think the bond-holder
violates his promises when he refuses to
take the same Kind Of money he paid for
his bonds.
Why, asked the speaker, should not
the greenback come to the front at this
time, and at all times, when the interests
of the laboring classes are under consid-
Grafton. Persistently stigmatized and
caricatured as the rag baby, for years
denounced as dishonest money, a fraud
upon business and the commercial world,
it stands to-day with it's purchasin g
power as great as the brightest coin in
the world. Yet the Republican candi-
date for President suggested in 1873,
that an idiot asylum should be erected
for believers in the greenback. 1 be-
lieved in the greenback then, and do
now, and take my place alongside fyon
under General Harrison's sweeping, in
tolerant, brutal criticism and denurcia-
ton. He canvassed the State in 1873 as
the candidate Of his party for the Senate,
and | the candidate of mine, and the
people OF Indiana decided by more than
thirty thousand majority that he was
nearer a financial idiot than was, and
that should go back to Washington.
Senator Voorhees, then entered upon
the tariff issue and recounted the history
of modern tariff legislation. No relief,
the speaker said, was afforded to labor
by resort to the domestic excise system.
On the contrary this system was
made the pretext for still further
encroachment on the part of monopoly
and greed against the rights of those
who toll. The two acts of Congress OF
1862 and 1864, by which protective du-
ties were made to ascend to a Pixies
Peak altitude, were demanded on ex-
press ground that the manufacturer
should be compensated for the amount OF
his internal tax. On this point the
speaker quoted extensively from Sena-
tors Morrill,, Allison and others, and
said: For nineteen years, the Republi-
can party has caused the people to pay
the manufacturer at least 500, 900, 900 a
year in consideration of tax paid by the
manufacturer to the Government. The
money kings have thus far resisted every
effort to reduce the mountainous tariff
duties by which they have drained the
earning of the people.
Senator Voorhees, then discussed the
labor question and surplus. He declared
that the labor interests of the country
need in circulation every dollar that can
be spared from the expenses of the Gov
ernment, and yet there is piled up as
useless surplus enough of the laboring
peoples money to pay down cash more
than two hundred dollars for every day
since the birth OF Christ.
Touching upon the Republican internal
revenue plank Senator Voorhees, said In
this Christian land and age men are some
times spoken OF as Christian statesmen
have nothing better than free whisky
and tobacco to offer the people
IN response to their cry for re-
lief. The shareholders of the South
once belonged to the class which COM
posed the money power. They once
were the monopolists Of cheap underpaid
labor. The most bitter and implacabl
supporters of slavery thirty years ago.
were in fact the most successful and
efficient abolitionists of the nineteenth
century. They struck too far and their
blows came back to destroy them, and
so it will be with purse-p proud, insolent
and misled tax-eaters of the present day,
by making no concession to the over
taxed people and by refusing a single
dollar of reduction on the necessities of
life, but on the contrary, insisting that
whisky and tobacco should be free. The
manufacturers have done more to pro-
mote the ideas of free trade in this
country in the last few months than the
eloquent and gifted tongues and pens of
Frank Hurd, Henry Watterson and
David A Wells.
The speaker touched upon the part
General Harrison took in suppressing the
riots in 1877. and closed by saying that
as attorney for Blaine, Harrison com
mitted crime against the State by de-
clarinu in fha d;o,o;eeol oe AZ.