The aegis & intelligencer. [volume] (Bel Air, Md.) 1864-1923, 1888-10-05

now. l suppose 30; some old ones, but
| where is there anything made now of foreign
leather that is sold in America, except, per-
haps, ladies' gloves; or Russian leather pocket
books, or something made out of Italian
leather and put in the house as a sort of an
ornament? Wehave many millions ofdolars
| invested more than we had in 1872, supplying
the sixty-two millions of American people
with American-made shoes. Everything in
leather We make now in America except
! some gloves, and we have to import certain
amount OF leather to cut up with our leather
ana use it in our manufactures. Our work
men make the seyenty-six million of dollars
which was made in 1880 in leather manufac-
| lures over what was made in 1872 Our
workmen got that money and our manufac-
turers got that profit. Moreover, on the i'm
| ported leather which was manufactured in
this country and sold again as finished pro-
| duct there was profit made by our mer-
chants in the exchange. Well, now, the
| Democratic members of that committee said,
IF this is good for leather why is it not good
for clothes?" My friends, the day will come
when more eloquent man than !, standing
before an audience like that which am adj
dressing this evening, will congratulate you
on the fact that there is not an English made
piece of clothing in the whole audience-that
no lady has to send abroad for her worsted,
no gentleman for his clothing, but that it is
wholly made by American manufacturers.
We raise 265,000,000 and we need 600, 900 900
pounds of wool. We take the difference of
more than 300,000,000 pounds to add to our
American wool, and we bring much of il into
this country in the shape of the finished pro.
duct. Now, our first principle was that we
should relieve the people from the burdens of
unnecessary taxation on the necessaries of
life, and as our second, we determined to re-
a raw m fur &c
the duties upon 1t, and that we would start
with these. But that was notall Sometimes
the tariff acts as bonus. My Republican
| friends contend that that goes into the treas
ury. All taxes are bad. l never thought
that a tax could make man rich. | can
imagine a man getting along in this world
pretty comfortably without any taxes at all.
| look upon taxes as look upon sickness and
vice and sin, and would like to abolish them
all If it could be done but it cannot be done.
We have to have them to carry on the gov
eminent. We have to have them for the
necessary expenditures of that government.
But we ought to have it 80 that every man
shall know just how much he pays. Suppose
you knew how much you are paying now to
the federal government, don't you think you
would halloap
l don't believe that you would send DR..
Shaw or Mr.. Stump, or anybody else down to
Washington to vote taxes if you knew how
many dollars were being taken away from
you unnecessarily day after day. Let us no
longer take from the people in the name of
taxes that which is mere bonus. Ifpossible,
let US relieve the people of the bonus. AS an
illustration, an object lesson to you and some
thing for you TO think about as you 90 back
home, shall be satisfied if you take this
single lesson home with you. We built last
year thirteen thousand miles of railroad
When the steel rails which were laid to make
these railroads the American people, under
our legislation, were compelled to pay to the
steel manufacturers eleven hundred dollars
bonus mile over and above fair living
profit. 1t is estimated that thirteen times
that eleven hundred dollars is the bonus
which the steel-rail manufacturer has gotten
out of the American taxpayer under the pres
ent tariff law in the year 1887. Twenty.one
millions of dollars are invested in the steel
works which make all the steel rails in Amer
lea, SO that eleven times thirteen thousand
dollars, or over fourteen millions of dollars, is
the sixty.six per cent. profit per year upon
all the capital which is invested in all the
works which we have to make steel rails and
all other forms of steel in America. And the
percentage was over and above a fair living
profit on the money of the men who run these
works. And this has been given them in the
name OF taxation and in the name of the
American workingmen. 1t makes his wages
higher, they say, and they let him see how
his wages were made higher by giving notice
at the Pittsburg steel works that working
mems wages would be reduced ten per cent,
and putting in Pinkerton detectives to keep
the American workingmen out of the works
if he would not consent to work at that re-
duction OF ten per cent. And that is the way
that the men who had gotten fourteen millions
of bonus treated the workingmen in whose
name that bonus was given. Now, these are
the historical facts within the knowledge of all
and within the year just passed. Those
works are now run by those workingmen
1t SO happens for the benefit of the working
men that this is Presidential year, and &C.
cordngly this ten per cent. reduction has not
been insisted upon. But rs soon as the Pres
idental election is over don't we know that
that ten per cent. of the workingmen's wages
will go where the woodbne twneth?
Laughter. AT this point citizen on the
grand stand grasped the orator enthusiastic
caliy by the hand and exclaimed, "Yes, that's
the truth, Colonel"
Yes, that is Gou's TRUTH my venerable
friend. Whoever heard of man paying
more for labor than he could get it for2 l
have never known man who would do that
though there may possibly be some cranks
who have done it. | never heard of anybody
that did it. l don't know a steelrail manu-
facturer who pays his men anything more
than he is compelled to pay them. The steel
rail duty is so high that the man who wants
to buy steel-rail cannot buy "a foreign rail,
except at one port, and that is the port of San
Francisco. And why can he afford to do 1t
there? Because the transportation by water
from England to San Francisco is so much
lower than transportation by land over a rail.
road than he can afford to pay the duty at
San Francisco plus the freight, for the Eng
lish made rail better than he can afford to pay
for the American made steel rail ut Pittsburg
plus the freight by rail to San Francisco Nor
must you forget, gentlemen, that there Is a
vast difference between the man who goes to
sell his labor and the man to whom he would
sell it, for man can wait for a dividend
longer than stomach can wait for break
fast Laughter And when man goes to
sell his labor to the gentleman who made one
million five hundred thousand dollars last
year he has no choice but to submit to his
dictation as to terms. My fellow citizens, we
had three guiding principles which directed
our course in our attempt to secure the neces-
sary reduction OF taxation. The first was to
reduce the price of necessities, the second
was to reduce the price of raw materials, and
the third was to reduce the bonuses to favor
ed classes. And there we stopped, because at
that point we had gotten our fifty million re-
duction and that point, we thought, as prac-
tical men, was the point to wait aud sec what
could be DONE My friends, what was done
by the Mills bill was very important, but the
act of passing 1t was much more important.
We had been tainted with the allegation that
we could not govern. "Why," said Mr.. Sher.
man in the Senate, "they cannot pass tariff
bill in the House, the Democratic party does
not know how to govern the country; it can
not govern itself" Well, it was so in the
Forty Eighth Congress, and it was so in the
Forty Ninth Congress, and now we come to
the Fiftieth Congress. We only had fifteen
majority, and over thirty of our friends
thought themselves protectionIsts. We did
not quarrel over names; we INDUCED in no
epthets; we did not go out and say, "You
are damned hereto that believes in protec-
tion." But we each said to the other, 1--WE
are trusted by the people with high duty;
let us come together and see if we cannot