Staunton spectator. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1849-1896, 1890-07-23
READ WHAT HE SAID.
PRACTICAL POINTS ABOUT THE TARIFF.

PRACTICAL POINTS ABOUT THE TARIFF.
At a mass.meeting held in Baltimore,
under the auspices of the Tariff Reform
Club, on the night of the 18th inst,
speeches were made by Congressman Crisp
of Georgia, Congressman Hemphil of S.
c., and Congressman Wilson of W. Va. Mr..
Wilson said:-
"No man can look on the map of Mary
land without seeing that it is dedicated to
tariff reform. The city of Baltimore is the
gift of the sea. If while its people SUM
Der tonight some mighty convulsion of na-
ture should lift che bed of the Patapsco to
the love! of your wharves and tilt the waters
of the Chesapeake into the Atlantic all
classes of your people would instantly feel
that an irreparable disaster had befalen
the city, and that the paralysis of death had
fastened on its prosperity and greatness.
No men understood the fact and all that it
implies more fully than the great merchants
who more than half century ago, in the
rude beginning of railroad construction,
reached boldly forth for the products of the
Ohio Valley and sought to make them for
ever prize for the markets of Baltimore.
''Their enterprise, time and circumstances
considered, is not surpassed in foresight
and daring in all the wonderful history of
the Developments of railroads. They risk
ed much on the hazard of doubtful ex-
pertinent, and they did so because they
clearly saw the mighty stakes for which
they were playing. Looking dowa between
the capes they saw the great ocean, whose
tides rolling up to their city gates offered
l.. I, IL TO oil ha
kets of the world. They could lot send
forth empty ships to trade in those markets,
and SO they sought to gather here the sur
plus products of the fertile regions beyond
the Allegheny, that both going and coming
these ships might have profitable cargoes,
from whose mutual interchange aud DIS
tribution the city might draw wealth and
ever-increasing prosperity. They had
learre ed from history how sure and exuber-
ant fountain of wealth is the abundance
of the seas, and from their most favored
location they sought to gather of that
wealth.
HIGH WAYS OF TRADE.
"But, my fellow-citizens, their wisdom
to. day is discarded, if not, indeed, turned
into folly. A party has arisen aad attained
to power in this country, whose teaching
declares that the seas which surround US
are not highways of trade; not invitations
to share in the commerce and traffic of the
world, but permanent barriers to shelter
and protect US from the Industrial attacks
of otter nations; party whose chief prop
het has declared that it were indeed, better
for US, as nation, if these waves were
waves of fire, and the thunder of the tenn
pest that sometimes roughens them stern
interdiet against the prosecution of foreign
commerce. In pursuance of this policy
they have already called oft our merchant
marine from the seas, forbidden the Amer
ican merchant and the American mariner
to take part in the carrying trade of the
world, made unlawful, or ct least unprofit-
able, the many occupations that are called
into being by this trade, and dried up
great source of employment for American
labor and of profitable enterprise fer Amer
lean capital. But th is is not the call for
our assent blifg here tonight. We have
been fighting against this condition of af-
fairs for too many years to come out under
the fervors of a July sun merely for new
protest, no matter how sincere, against it.
We are, at least, accustomed to passive
commerce, howe YER much We may feel its
wrong and its oppressiveness. but we are
to-day confronted with new turn OF the
screw, an aggravation of our distress By
another attack upon what yet remaius to us
of that passive commerce. A tariff bill has
already passed one branch of Congress, and
is now pending in the other branch, whose
object cpsuly aud repeatedly avowed by it's
trainers and supporters is to check import
a.ions and still more narrow our foreign
commerce. They have. in fact, gone care
fully around our frontiers, and whenever
they found an opening in our tariff walls
through which there rolled or tiickled any
stream Of trade they have sought to seal it
up, or at least raise SO high those walls as
greatly to diminish that stream. In their
blindness they have not seen that in closing
these openings and raising higher these
walls they have not only shut out the.
stream from abroad, but shut in the stream
that struggled to get out They claim that
in so doing they are shielding American
industry, or, as the deceptive phrase goes,