The weekly register. [volume] (Point Pleasant, Va. [W. Va.]) 1862-1909, 1891-10-14
PROVIDENCE OR M,KINLEY.

by Mr.. Webster in 1850, in the Sem
ate of the United States, in his ia
nous 7th of March speech.
We may well ask ourselves the
question, if a different distribution
of property is found in the country
to-day, what has brought it about,
whether it is sign of health or a
symptom of dangerous disease in
the body of politics.
Whom Mr.. Webster spoke, the
country had had thirty years of
embittered controversy on the tar
iff question, from 1916, when pro-
lection first got a footing in our tax
laws, to 1916, when, with the wis
dom brought by bitter and disas-
trous experience, we adopted the
Walker tariff, tsconfessedly and pro-
fessedly," as Senator Allison truly
says, "a revenue tariff"
The country, after tossing so long
ON the waves of the angry contro-
versy, at length found repose and
expanding prosperity under sys-
tenn of laws that did not try to make
one citizen rich by exaction from
his neighbors, and Mr.. Webster's
statement as to the ownership of
property in the North in 1850 is a
splendid testimonial of the the nat
ural working of free institutions,
when unhampered by such laws
The truth is that the country has
never enjoyed such a period of
steady and general prosperity as
during the existence of the Walker
tariff from 1916 to 1861.
Protectionists of the Mckinley
school, making their facts out of
their own imaginations, assure us
that it was period of universal dis
tress, of steady progress toward ma
tional bankruptcy.
But the people who lived through
the period were not aware of such
distress, and were SO well satisfied
with the tariff that it dropped en-
tirely out of politics, and when after
eleven years it produced a rebund-
ant revenue they lowered it by
unanimous consent without a single
political vote against the decrease.
When we contrast the condition
of the country in 1850 as described
by Mr.. Webster with what is known
to be its condition to-day, we can
not but know that there has been
some potential agency at work dur
ing the past generation to change
the distribution of property and to
produce that congestion of wealth
which is one of the most alarming
facts of our time to all thoughtful
men.
How much of the whole property
of the country is in the hands of the
laborers to-day? Certainly not five
sixths, nor yet three -sixths, nor yet
two-sixths, and the amount held by
them seems to be growing proper
tionately less.
When Mr.. Thos. G. Sherman, a
leading lawyer ofNew York, under
took a year ago to investigate the
question, "Who owns the United
States?" he found that in the first
century of our existence we had
piled up larger number of colossal
fortunes than exist anywhere else
in the world, even in old countries
where class laws have prevailed
from time immemorial, and that the
bulk of that wealth, which figures
so prominently in our census and in
the boasts of our tariff orators, is
really the possession of very small
part of our sixty odd millions of
people.
That we should outstrip all other
people In the accumulation of wealth,
considering that we are developing
the resources of a new country, so
large in area and SO rich and diver
sified in resources, is but natural,
and justifies no special boasting on
our part. But that this unequaled
wealth, as it is produced, steadily
passes to the hands of a small frac-
ton of the whole people, building
up private fortunes larger than they
are found anywhere else in the
world, while the great masses OF the
American people fight the unresist-
ing battle for the necessaries of life,
is not natural state of things, and
calls for earnest and anxious con-
sideration.
All history shows that no device
for getting rich quickly, easily,
bountifully, has ever been invented
that compares. in ifs resuIts NTH