The weekly register. [volume] (Point Pleasant, Va. [W. Va.]) 1862-1909, 1890-08-27

1@---5 oclOfe Inc Iaflu hefOrm
Clubs of Maryland:
10 man can look on the map OF
Maryland without seeing that it is
dedieated to tariff reform. The city
Of baltimore is the gift of the sea.
# While the people slnmber to night
some mighty convulsion of nature
shoald lift the bed of the Patapsco
to the level of your wharves and tilt
the waters of the Chesapeake into
the Atlantic all cIassess of your peo-
pie would instantly feel that an IRE.
parable disaster had befaIlen 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
t',ah the great merchants who more
.ah : half eentury ago. in the rude
beginning of railroad construction,
reached boldly forth for the products
of the Ohio Valley aud sought to
make them forever a prize for the
markets of Baltimore.
Their enterprise, times and circum-
stances considered, is not surpassed
in foresight and daring in all the
wonderful history of the develop
ments of railroads. They risked
much on the hazard ofa doubtful ex-
pertinent, and they did SO because
they clearly saw the mighty stakes
for which they were playing. Look
ing down between the capes they see
the great ocean, whose tides rolling
up to their city gates, offered to bear
back its commerce to. all the markets
of thetworld. They could not send
forth empty ships to trade in those
markets, and so they sought to
gather here the surplus products of
the fertile regions beyond the Allie
gheny. and both going and coming
these ships might have profitable
cargoes, from whose mutual inter-
change and distribution the city
might draw wealth and ever-increas-
ing prosperity. They had learned
from history how sure and exuber-
ant a fountain of wealth is the
abundance of the seas, and from
their most favored location they
sought to gather of that wealth.
HIGHWAYS oFTRADE.
But, my fellow citizens, their wis.,
dom TO day is discarded, if not, in
deed, turned into folly. A party has
arisen and attained to power in this
country, whose teaching declares
that the.seus which surrounds us are
not highways Of trade; not invita-.
tions to share in the commerce and
traffic of the world, but permanent
barriers to shelter and protect us
from the industrial attacks of other
nations; party whose chief prophet
has declared that it were indeed bet
ter for us as u nation if these waves
of fire and the thuuder of the temp
est that sometimes roughens them a
stern interdict against the prosecu-
tion of foreign commerce. In pur-
suance of this policy they have al
ready cleared off our merchant ma
rine from the seas, forbidden the
American merchant and the Ameri-
can mariner to take part in the car
rying trade of the world, made un-
lawful, or at least Improbable, the
many occupations that are called fq-
to being by this trade, and dried up
a great source of employment for
American labor and of profitable
enterprise for American capital.
But this is not the call for our as
sembling here tonight We have
been fighting against this condition
of affairs for too many years to come
out under the fervors of July sun
merely for new protest, no matter
how sincere, against it. We are at
least accustomed to a passive COM
merce, however much we may feel
its wrong and its oppressiveness, but
we are to-day confronted with a now
turn of the screw, an aggravation of
our distress by another attack upon
what yet remains to us of this pas
sive commerce. A tariff bill has al
ready passed one branch of Congress
and is now pending in the other
branch, whose object, openly and re-
peatedly avowed by its trainers and
supporters, is to check importations
and still more narrow our foreign
commerce. They have in fact gone
carefully aronnd our frontiers, and
whenever they found an opening in
our tariff walls through which there
rolled or trickled 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.
T. Al - n