The Democratic press. [volume] (Ravenna, O. [Ohio]) 1868-1901, 1890-10-29

powerful. Such is the new doctrine of
American liberty. Rival establishments
are undersold, or bought in, and closed
down by the trusts, depriving thousands
of workingmen and women of employ
ment, and this is called the protection
OF American labor!
Such are some of the economic results
of prohibitory protection; let US look
at some of its political results. 1t
has given US an hereditary President.
1t has introduced the hereditary prin-
ciple into the system of administrative
appointments. 1t has converted the
merit system of appointments into
hideous farce. It has put London
banker, chiefly notable for the ampli-
tude of his check-book, into the Vice-Pres-
ident's chair. 1t has chosen as his Sec
ond, an alleged statesman who declares
that the Decalogue and the Golden Rule
have no place in politics. 1t has con-
verted the National Senate into million
aires club. 1t has given US the most
prof1igate Congress this country has yet
known. 1t has placed the House of
Representatives at the mercy of par
tisan autocrat who assumes that the
minority has neither rights nor duties.
1t has put the Republican organization
under the control of another autocrat
against whom it has been responsibly
and repeatedly charged by his own par
tisans, and without denial that he took
$780, 600 from the Treasury of Pennsyl-
vania, and squandered it in gambling
It has exalted the custom-house, with all
its favoritism, intrigue and rottenness
as the chief temple of American
liberty. 1t has put this same
custom-house before the school house
and college and proclaimed tariff pro-
hibition as the great American fetch,
before which every knee shall bow. 1t
has undertaken to subject all party ad-
ministration to Custom House usage and
the whole country to the sordid dogmas
and practices of Custom House politics.
Ithas exhausted the surplus of S100, 000,
900, and confronted US with probable
deficit in the near future. 1t has exalted
the love of gain as the chief American
motive, and has glorified wealth as the
only thing on earth worth striving for
or thinking about, worse than all it has
undertaken to corrupt our ballot with
the contributions of trusts, and to buy
with money the suffrages of American
freemen.
Meanwhile, as Mr.. Secretary Blaine
has just declared, ''our market for
foreign breadstuffs grows mar
rover" Our trust-protecting duties
have provoked, and still provoke, retail
atory measures on the part of foreign
governments, excluding more and
more the products of our farms from
the markets of the world. As neces-
sary consequence of this, farming lands
have greatly deprecated in value from
one end of the country to the other.
Within thirty miles of Columbus beau
tiful farms have been recently offered
without takers, at little over half what
they cost in money ten years ago.
In recent speech in the House of
Representatives, Mr.. Butterworth de-
clared that he could count on his ten
fingers men whose combined profits in
the last decade have exceeded those of
all the agriculturists of any State in the
Union.
The remedies offered for this state of
things are higher taxation and more
monopoly. These are rendered US in
the Mckinley bill. But the farmers of
the great West and Northwest are
not satisfied with that measure.
They are profoundly disatisf-
ed with it. Even Mr.. Secretary Blaine
is dissatifed with it, and goes so far as
to say, in substance, tn at a prohibitory
tariff, after all, is chiefly useful as
diplomatic expedient. He wants to
barter away such duties for equivalent
free trade. He wants them put on
merely that they may be taken off
again by treaty. He declares that there
is not section or line in the McKin-
ley bill that will open market for
bushel of wheat or another barrel of
pork. And why should there be? Must
not our trade be confined exclusively to
the ''home market?' Such is the pro-
hibitory tariff fat But the sturdy farm
ers of the country do not accept that
fiat. They are tired of selling the pro-
duce of their farms without profit
while the protected trusts are paying
enormous profits on their inflated
stocks. They are tired of paying
these trusts higher prices for what
they buy than the same arti-
cles are sold for to foreigners. In conse-
quence of this, the farming element
throughout the country is showing a
disposition to repudiate the prohibitory
tariff dogma, and the magnates of mo-
nopoly suddenly find themselves in dan
ger of overthrow. Having chained down
the safety-valve and thrown turpentine
on the fire, these magnates now perceive
that there is about to be an explosion.
The discovery of this danger has COM
PEELED the political champions of the
trusts to resort to desperate measures.
With fatuitous haste they have rushed
into the Union as States, six Territor-
les, the combined voting population of
which is considerably less than that of
Ohio. They have thus gained, as they
think, twelve Senators and nineteen
Presidential Electors, but still they are
not happy. political landslide is i'm
minent in the great West, and some thing
must be done to make good the decline
of monopolistic power that will ensue if
that landslide occurs. For that reason
this Force Bill has been resorted to. 1t
is twin brother to the Mckinley Bill
1t is prohibitory tariff expedient, and
nothing else.