The Helena independent. [volume] (Helena, Mont.) 1875-1943, 1891-04-26

by laws AND 1notltuSlOuo. we IOuHu0u Oul
government upon tho great principle tha'
whatever this country offers to it's people
shall. at least SO far az the laws and insti-
tutions are concerned, be the common
wealth of all the people of the country,
And vet for a quarter of a century We have
had upon the statute books laws which
place the people into the hands OF the IA
yored beneiciaries Of those laws. l am not
going to attempt to discuss in it's details
that great question which 10Y dividea the
parties-the tariff question. | am going to
SAY ono thing; that n journey across the
country ought to cleanse any mans mind
of a belief in Capitalization. and ought to
cleanse him of the belief in the potency of
the SO called protective system. lap
plause. Consider what this coun-
try presents to one who travels
from ocean to ocean,; constantly comparing
ourselves with the crowded countries OF
the old world, with England and its 40
thing over 4O,0Oo,0O0, with Germany and it's
still larger population. Why there Is
scarcely one of them hat you couldn't put
in Montana. And yet for moro years than
history can tell they have been crowded
with mon and women treading upon each
or luxuries. but the bare s%ustensnce and
simplest comforts of life. Long ages
ago all the lands in those
countries passed into the hands of priv
LEGGED ownership. Their mines have been
explored and partly exhausted; for thou
sands of years their fields titled and robbed
of their fertility. And in every one of
them to-day there exist a class government
whereby social, political n other priv.
ileges have passed into the hands OF the
favored few, Turn to our country extend
ing from ocean to oceans: ~forty-four great
commemorative, many Of them larger i'll
territorial extent than any OF the countries
| have named. For all the thousands of
years that men ave crowded England.
France or Germany this country was
hidden behind the western seas.
The mold of your valleys WAS getting
deeper and deeper, the minerals in your
mountains becoming stored in greater
roamed over by a few thousand savages
who asked of earth but q place to pillow
their heads at night or a resting place when
they died. They felled no tree in the for
ests on your mountains and sunk no pick IN
your mines; they furrowed none of your
valleys with plows. In the ripeness of time
there came here from the old world people
who were intelligent and enterprising and
devoted to liberty. They were men who
had the benefit of thousands of years of
training in the capacity for self-govern-
ment; they brought here knowledge.
science, skill, invention and all
the accumulated virtue OF order and stable
society. They were turned loose into this
great country with its illimitable wealth
and we nave to-day only in this country
but about 100000 of people enjoying
these great blessings that we're reserved for
this great people in their orderly arrange
ment by Gods providence. And yet we are
told to-day, all over his country from
thousands of platforms in every political
campaign that these superior benefits and
abundance of wealth are not due to these
blessings that Goa has showered upon us
but to a miserable law of congress made b.
Mr.. Mckinley. cloud laughter and applause)
That's the argument. If we did not have
this law of congress, made in the secret re-
cesses of a committee room by six or seven
gentlemen, that the bottom would drop
and we would all go right down to the level
of the pauper people of the old world.
~(Laughter). In other words, that is the
only enure by which we hold in this coun-
try, that is different from the people of
other countries, which is not the gift OF this
great and boundless domain, not the work
ing of free institutions, not the turning out
upon this land of a little population,
but to the privileged We grant to a few
thousands to tax all the rest. II we hold
our prosperity and our future by such IA
tenure as this we ought to be of all men in
the world the most miserable. And the
first work to do would be to establish a
file of soldiers around Mr.. Mckinley and
his comrades n guard them so they
would not slip ont of the country and carry
all the prosperity with them.
There is one other thought, and that is,
in the last twenty years the world has been
made over again. We live in a period of
industrial revolution unparalleled in the
history of the world. We stand amazed in
the presence of this great industrial revolu-
ton. Look at what railroads have lone
for this country, look nov they span the
continent so that we pass from sea to sea
with all the comforts of home within a few
days. Look at our modern inventions,
how they have revolutionized modern life.
Some of these inventions have entirely de-
stroyed some of our occupations. Mr..
Webster defined manufacturing to be in his
day manual labor mingled with a little
capital" and that was true. But to-day
the great machines of modern invention
have displaced human lahor-the great fac
tories are no longer filled by operatives, but
filled with machinery. They are supplant-
ing human labor everywhere and increasing
ten-fold and one hundred-fold the creative
capacity of human labor. The human
pursuits have been more or less
and revolutionized by this great
industrial progress of modern times. There
are two applications that I want you to
make of the idea, which you can develop
quite as we'll as l. In England, where class
system taxation has passed away now these
forty years, 1T mas recently been stated by
the highest possible authority, the chancel-
lor of the e%xchequer, that in modern times
the number of the great incomes have not
increased, the number of moderate
incomes have somewhat increased, and
the number of small II COM
Portable incomes have greatly in
creased applause, and another high En-
glish authority, the head of the statistical
bureau, commenting upon that fact, made,
seems to me, the proudest assertion any
nation could make, INT that was that the
poor of England had gained the chief ben
etlt IN the last fifty yeats. The great i'll
crease IN productive capacity has been in
the great force put beneath all the citizens.
and has lifted the poor, the middle and
tn @ upper classes all together. How is this
to be proved in this country? Is it not
true, or sufficiently true, to be
a matter of the greatest
possible concern to us that this great in
dustrial revolution with US has not been So
forced beneath the system, but it has been
wedged into the system that has lifted
some and depressed others. | would be the
last man to declaim against wealth merely
as wealth. 1t would be strange, indeed, If
IN a great, new country like ours, with SO
much that we have not yet spied out,
If great fortunes were not accumulated.
But That which | do complain of is to tax
the wealth produced by the great mass of
the people n gives that wealth to a few
favored beneticiaries. Applause. Is not
war being made. progressive insidlous
war, upon free Institutions? We nave been
proud to boast that in days past every
boy born III tins country, under equal laws,
under democratic government, had the
opportunity to become just what he de