Belmont chronicle. [volume] (St. Clairsville, Ohio) 1855-1973, 1892-09-08
PUBLIC OPINION.

III 1881, dS dSdAAoS 1SSOf VI IA N~'N-~6N
increase of $23.11 per employe, in sixty
seven industries, is denounced by the
Democratic press as a Republican
campaign document" Attention is
called to the fact that Mr.. Peck is a
Hill Democrat, and it is claimed that
his wicked report is instigated by
malicious designs upon the economic
supremacy of the great White Elephant
of the Democracy, Grover Cleveland.
1t is not a novel plea that cold and
colorless report of facts is Republican
campaign document. Facts have way
of becoming Republican campaign doc
uments when printed In black and
white. The facts of the history of the
United States. during the war are an ex
cellent Republican campaign document.
So, too, are the facts of the financial
history of the United States from that
period to the resumption of specie pay
ments, on January 1, 1879. The facts
of the history of civil services reform,
ballot reform and liquor legislation re-
form, are all good Republican campaign
documents. The history of the Harrison
administration is an able Republican
campaign document of facts, and this
very complaint was made only few
days ago against Chairmon Carter, when,
on laying down his Office as Commis-
sioner of Public Lands, he turned in an
annual report containing a statement of
the condition of the busidess of that
Office when he took it and when he
forsook it.
The amusing thing is that Commits
sioner Peck, a Democrat, is accused of
being a conspirator against the great
and good Cleveland because he an
nounces facts that contradict Mr.. Cleve-
lands platitudinous theories. His re-
port. in the words of the Mugwump Post,
"was evidently put out at this time to
damage Mr.. Cleveland and to prevent a
Democratic victory in the nation" If
this sort of reasoning is trne about Peck,
it must be true about other Democrats or
Mugwumps or free traders who have
made confessions inimical to Mr.. Cleve
lands position as the apostle of tariff
reform. Mr. Cleveland took that posi-
tion in December, 1887. Why should
not General Francis A. Walker be ac-
cused of issuing Republican campaign
document in order "to damage Mr.
Cleveland?" He has, since 1887, pub
lished an advanced course of his work
on political Economy" in which he
says (Section 263):
1t is undoubtedly true, as the protectionists as
sert that tariff upon foreign goods tends to create
and maintain high rates of wages in the factory
industries
Then there is Superintendent Jackson,
of Castle Garden, under the old State
control of immigration. He testified,
on April 0, 1890. before the Congress
sional Committee that was investigating
the immigration business, as follows:
Immigrants bring less baggage than formerly,
because they have found out that clothing and
household supplies are as cheap here as in the old
countries.
Was the wicked Jackson also con-
spring to furnish the Republican party
with campaign documents and to defeat
Mr.. Cleveland? Had not Mr.. Cleveland
again and again insisted before 1890
that the tariff didn't raise wages and
that it did tax people generally on their
clothing and household supplies? Mr..
Cleveland's heart had also bled for the
poor taxed farmer. Was the New York
Herald also issuing pernicious Repub-
lican campaign document when it
editorially said on August l6, 1890:
Mr. Blaine's talk about reciprocity chiefly bene-
fitting the farmers is fine specimen of his peculiar
nonsense. The farmers will be benefited, but not
by new markets for their grain and other products
They will be benefited by the greater prosperity of
the manufacturing operatives which will result
from wider market for American manufacturers
Jackson, being a State appointee, was
Hill Democrat and sus-
picious person, and the Herald's heart
is not to be depended on to be true to
me Mugwump Poll anyhow. But can
it be that the great political economist,
Edward Atkinson, was IN the pay of the
wicked Republican campaigners when
he wrote in the Forum this year the
following words:
There never has been period in the history of
this or any other country when the general rate of
wages was so high as it is now, or the prices of
goods relatively to the wages, so low as they are
to-day; nor period when the workman, in the
strict of the word, has so fully secured to his
own use and employment such steadily and pro-
gressively increasing proportion of a constantly
product.
All this while Mr.. Cleveland was busy
writing letters to the American work
ingman telling him that the tariff was
grinding him down under the iron heel
of oppression, and making the poor |
poorer in order to make the rich richer |
And what remains to be said when
Senator Carlisle, the ablest Democratic |
statesman in either branch of Congress,
signs Republican cam
paign document, disguised under the
specious title "Report on Retail Wages |
and Prices" published by sub COM
mittee of the Senate Committee on
and giving currency to the
following Objectionable Republican
facts:
Average decrease in prices of PA articles in |
common use under Mckinley bill, 0.64 per cent.
Average increase in wages in 15 general Occupa-
lions under Mckinley bill, OBJ per cent.
Average decrease of cost of living in protected
America, 3.4 per cent.
Average increase in cost of living in free trade
Great Britain, 1.9 per cent.
Alasl are all the facts Republican
documents? Is the whole
world in a conspiracy to disprove Mr..
economic assertions and to
defeat his political aspirations by max
ing Republican campaign documents
without end? Or is he merely sort of
tariffomaniac, who thinks the rest of the
world insane on the subject of the tariff?
We have heard before now of monoma-
MACS who thought they and those who
agreed with them the only sane people |
and that everybody else was part of
the universal conspiracy to suppress the
truth and those who embodied il.