The Bennington banner. [volume] (Bennington, Vt.) 1858-1894, 1891-03-12
THE PIrTY-FIRsr CONGRESS,

Wnen the temperature of partisan OPP
position shall have cooled down, and the
sober second thought of the intelligent
business men and students of affairs in
this country shall have had time to assert
itself, we believe it will be generally
recognized that the Fifty first Congress
has done a cycle of very strong legisla.
lative work Strong in the vigorous as.
sertion everywhere of the idea of Amer
icanism, both as principle of decided
nationality and as asserting the rights OF
the people before the world.
American opportunities of every kind
have been labelled ''for Americans"
American prosperity has been promoted,
and, with single notable exception, the
rights of the American citizens have
been protected against organized aSgres-
sion. And the duty of free people to
set the world an example of morality
and conscience has been done in two
especially conspicuous pieces of legisla-
ton, and i'll a lesser degree in several
other measures.
The right and duty of majority rule
was enforced i'll at least one House by
methods which, even if they were an
innovation upon musty parliamentary
presidents, and even if they were at
tended here and there by a few mistakes
in the course of many hundreds of Just
and sound decisions, were so plainly in
accordance with common sense as to
cause one to wonder why they had never
been adopted before. The result was
the transaction by the House of Repre-
resentatives, at least, of an enormous
amount of Legislative business. To this
trenchant assertion of the rights of the
majority to control the legislation for
which it will be held responsible by the
people, the success of the Fifty-first
Congress as n whole is very largely due.
A timid and compromising policy would
have made the minority aggressive and
have produced a carnival of log rolling
and confusion, but comparative little
useful legislation.
The principle of Americanism was
asserted. American markets were re.
served for American producers and
American business prosperity promoted,
first, by the passage of the great McKin-
ley bill, which was in reality whole
code of new laws, of many of which it
could be said that each one created or
enlarged an industry, while many others
of its provisions freed from taxation en-
tirely imports of articles which we do
not produce and which we need for i'm
mediate consumption or for raw mate
rials for established processes. A single
schedule of the bill freed from duty all
the raw material for the enormous sugar
industry, as well as few grades of the
finished product cheapest to the CON
sumner, while at the same time providing
for the encouragement of American pro-
duCtiOn of the same by bounty. Other
schedules, notably the cotton, wooden
and linen schedules, brought home to us
processes for the manufacture of the
finer textile fabrics incident to our
ascent in the scale of civilization. An
other, the iron schedule, in single
clause made possible the revival of a
great industry destined sooner or later
to employ $4,000 or 10000 people-the
tin plate industry. And past experience,
if not the experience of the four months
elapsed since the bill became law,
shows that the result of all these in
creases and new establishments of in
dustries will be the power to effect
economies in production and to lower
to the consumer the prices of the
products.
This increased protection to the Amer
lean producer, and later on the American
consumer, was clinched by a well drawn
Customs Administrative law. which
might almost be entitled to place
among the measures which have de-
cided tendency to sound morals, so
strongly does it discourage fraud and
differentiation. Nor were the home
markets. vast and capable of almost in
definite expansion as they are, the only
markets made available to Americans.
The reciprocity clauses of the Mckinley
bill, framed after the plan suggested by
President Harrison himself, distinctly
asserted what we might call the Monroe
doctrine applied to markets of Central
and South America are ours. It was a
step of much more than transient sig
nificance. 1t was the recognition of
principle that the whole future of the
Western Hemisphere will have to reckon
with.
The mere assertion Of the principle of
reciprocity and of America for Amer
leans would, however, have amounted to
little, had no steps been taken to make it
operative. Such bill was taken when
the Postal Subsidy bill was passed That
bill declared that we are independent of
other nations on the sea as well as the
land: that our business men should have
the means of reaching the new markets
opened for them; that the American flag
should become a familiar sight on both
the great oceans of the world, and that
American shipbuilders and American
sailors should have the same protection
that we have EXTENDED to other home in
dustries. Such bill was needed toround
out both protection and reciprocity
legislation.
Americas commercial interests re
further promoted by law providing for
an increased volume of silver currency;
and American nationality was further