Los Angeles daily herald. [microfilm reel] (Los Angeles [Calif.]) 1884-1890, 1889-11-09
SATURDAY. NovEnssR ., 1859.
A Political Portent.

It le coming out as we pre- olcte0. Ine
"organs' are shedding 'bar'ls" of ink
to explain away the sweeping Republic
can defeat in Ohio and Iowa-the latter
the Gibraltar and the former the Mali
koff of the party in the Western States.
OF course these papers assign the defeat
to anything but the true cause. Pfohibi-
ton, Sunday laws, etc., are the reasons
given for their Waterloo. These lame
apologists do not consider - or,
rather, do not want to consider =
the fact that the people of the
Western States are opening their eyes to
the glaring delusions Of the war tariff.
The farmers, who are the main sufferers
from this policy, have put on their
thinking caps, and they are beginning to
see that there is q screw loose some
where. They find that the reward Of
their labor is regulated by the quotations
for grain in Europe where they have to
sell, whilst everything they buy is
handicapped with the enormous prices
due to the operations of tariff which
ekins them alive. The object lesson
they have received since the Presi-
Dental election has evidently not
been lost upon them. They we're told
that high tariff would bring prosperity to
the whole country that all we had to do
was to shut ourselves in with a Chinese
wall, sell to each other and grow rich i;
that the home market created by the war
tariff would make the farmers prosper
Gus /; indeed, the burthen of the song of
Abe opposition was that taxation was q
blessing, and the higher the people were
taxed on all they consumed the richer
and the greater would the nation be-
come.
Well the sturdy sons OF the soil are
beginning to see into the fallacy Of the
doctrine, and to realize that none Of the
ante-election promises Of their leaders
have bean fulfilled. On the contrary,
they find that things have gone from bad
to worse-that strikes, lockouts, suffering
and hard times have been more numer-
Gus, more acute and more pinching than
ever before, and they are naturally be-
ginning to think that there must be
something wrong and rotten in the
principle so highly extelled by their
political instructors. They know that
the mortgage on the farm has not been re-
leased; that the hons market for their
surplus produce is myth; that the condi-
ton of labor is growing worse that
money is harder to get; that the pro-
tected millionaires are absorbing the cash
Of the country, and piling upon the
golden Ossa in their strong boxes the
Pelion of gains from the sweat of the face
of labor. All these facts are opening to
their gaze, and the idea is beginning to
dawn upon them that whilst war tariff
is certain to make the rich richer, it at
the same time is sure to render the poor
poorer.
The side issues, with which our Repub.
licsn contemporaries are RECALLING US as
the cause of the tremendous defeat, may
cut some fgure-but very slight one
In the revolution of Tuesday. 1t is fact
that as general thing there is almost as
much gain as loss to party when it goes
flirting with cranky political secss.
Where one or two votes are repelled
here and there, they are compen-
stated for by the accession OF almost the
same number repelled from the opposite
side. But when the people are waking
up to the fallacy of 3 great and cardinal
principle-one that not only affects the
country in a general sense, but one
which operates to impoverish and OPP
press the great productive energies of the
nation, then political revolutions come
like mountain blasts aud sweep the
country in signal and portentous man.
ner. Tuesdays elections were the
avant courisrs of the great impending
political blizzard.