Los Angeles daily herald., 1888-04-28
NATIONAL CAPITAL.
The House DevOtes a Day
to the Tariff.
BOTH SIDES HEARD FROM
Capitol Cullings-A Crank at the
Presidents Reception
Notes.

| VhohlN6lON, AprI Zf.-Duuu, lrOu
the Committee on Merchant Marine
and Fisheries, reported and the
House adopted resolutions calling or
the Secretary Of the Treasury for in.
formation relative to the seal fisheries
| in Alaska.
| After short discussion as to whether
it was competent for the House to
proceed to-day to the consideration oi
private business, the House went into
Committee of the Whole on the Tariff
bill.
Brewer, OF Michigan, gladly well
coined the issue presented by the i'm.
pending measure. In times past the
Democratic party had sought to evade
the issue. In its platform of 1884 it
had declared for protection, free
trade, incidental protection, tariff
for revenue only and tariff only
for revenue; so that the voter
could construe the platform to suit
his own convictions. In Kentucky
the platform meant free trade; in
Pennsylvania, New York, Connecti-
cut and New Jersey the gentleman
from Pennsylvania (Randall) was able
to make the voters believe it meant
protection. By reason of the fraud
and intimidation practiced in one Sec
ton of the country and by means of
the deception practiced by the Demo
cratic leaders in another section, the
Democratic candidate for the Presi-
dency had been elected. During the
three years CT Democratic administra-
ton, the Democratic party in the
House had played fast and loose on
the great tariff question, until the ne.
cessities of the Government had COM
PEELED the administration to take some
decided position, and he honored the
President for having forced the party
to stop it's double dealing and define
it's attitude.
He then advocated the protective
system as one which tended to in
crease the wages of labor, and in sup
port of his proposition he cited various
statistics prepared by Commissioner
Wright. He was especially earnest
in his opposition to the free WOO
clause which, he said, would ruin al
industry which was national in its
Importance. He contrasted the con
dition of the country under free trade
and protection. The former, he said
brought the Government to a state
of bankruptcy, while the latter had
rendered the country prosperous ant
glorious.
Ford, of Michigan, said that the
question presented now was one o
tariff reduction, not abolition. Con.
gress had to take the part of a few
manufacturers against great body of
consumers, but that was Just what
had been done. The war tariff de.
clared for high prices for the producer
of iron, low prices for the producer ol
corn, high prices for the producer Of
glass, low prices for the producers oi
wheat. He ridiculed the position
taken by the prote ctionists that q
high tariff increased the wages o.
American workingmen. No indus.
tries, he said, showed more
poverty, more destitution and
more strikes among their workingmer
than those of the so-called protected
ones. There was not a hod-carrier in
the United States but who earned
more wages than the average person
employed III the industries benefited
by the war tariff. Referring to the claim
that the home market was the best
market, he said that the result of this
home market swindle is that the farm.
er was most beautifully deluded. The
high tariff party gets his vote, the high
trusts and monopolists get his money
and the farmer gets the hot end Of the
poker.
Goff, of West Virginia, said that the
action of tariff should be made BY
the friends of the protective
system and not by its
avowed enemies. President Cleve
lands cold blooded indifference te
the benefits of the people was entitled
to precedence over all the emanations
from the Executive Mansion in all
our history. From such a spirit as
President Cleveland exhibited, domi.
mating almost with a single impulse
the Democratic side of the House, he
;. (GofD would save our industries and
our homes. The Mills bill was con.
ceived by minds impregnated with
economic viciousness. Its passage
would be the death knell for protec,
ton. If they succeeded now they
proposed next year to take another
| step, and gradually but surely the
people were to be marched into
the camp of those who con-
tended for tariff for revenue
only. That system, as far as
labor was involved and industries
concerned, was as bad as free trade
George Washington was grandly right
when he suggested and approved the
first tariff provisions, and Grover
Cleveland (who, he hoped, would be
our last free-trade President) was
shamefully wrong when he suggested
and used the power of his great office
to secure the destruction of the pro-
tective system. The people had been
deceived in the last Presidential
campaign by the declaration that
Cleveland was a protectionist. The
hand of Esau would be offered again
but the people would not again be de-
ceived. He did not believe in free
raw material. There was ne
such thing as raw materia
in the sense in which il
was used in this discussion
Coal unmined was raw material, but
when it was mined it was the miners
finished product, and entitled to pro
lection the same as iron ore. 1t was
as much entitled to protection as thu
rice fields of the South and the sugar
plantations of the Mississippi valley
Wool clipped from sheep was not raw
material. 1t was the farmers finished
, labor, and the farmers had made III
/ their minds that it had to be pro
J tected. The duty Of 1867 should b
!. restored, and an industry so essents