Virginia free press. (Charlestown, Va. [W. Va.]) 1832-1916, 1892-07-06

went into operation there have been ten re-
ductions of the wages of laboring men to
one increase. We deny that there has been
any increase of prosperity to the country
since that tariff went into operation; and
we point to the dullness and distress, the
wage reductions and strikes in the iron trade,
as the best possible evidence that no such
prosperity has resulted from the Mckinley
act.
We call the attention of thoughtful Amer
leans to the fact that after thirty years of
restrictive taxes against the importation of
foreign wealth, in exchange for agricultural
surplus, the homes and farms of the country
have become burdened with real estate
mortgage debt of over two thousand five
hundred million dollars, exclusive of all
other forms of Indebtedness that in one of
the chief agricultural States of the West
there appears a real estate mortgage debt
averaging S165 per capita of the total pop
ulation, and that similar conditions and
tendencies are shown to exist in the other
agricultural exporting States. We de-
nounce policy which fosters no industry
so much as it does that of the sheriff.
RECIPROCITY.
Section 4. Trade interchange on the ba-
sis of reciprocal advantages to the countries
participating is time-hOnored doctrine of
the democratic faith, but we denounce the
sham reciprocity which juggles with the
peoples desire for enlarged foreign markets
and freer exchanges by pretending to estab-
lish closer trade relations for country
whose articles of export are almost exclu-
siyely agricultural products with other
countries that are also agricultural, while
erecting 4 custom-house barrier of prohib-
tive tariff taxes against the rich and the
countries of the world that stand ready to
take our entire surplus of products and to
exchange therefor commodities which are
neccessaries and comforts Of life among our
own people.
TRUSTS.
Section 5. We recognize in the trusts and
combinations which are designed to enable
capital to secure more than its just share of
the Joint product of capitai and labor nat
ural consequence of the prohibitive taxes,
which prevent the freer competition which
is the life of honest trade; but we believe
their worst evils can be abated by law, and
we demand the rigid enforcement of the
laws made to prevent and control them, to-
gether with such further legislation in re
straint of their abuses as experience may
show to be necessary.
PUBLIC LANDS.
Section G. The republican party, while
protesting policy of reserying the public
land for small holdings by actual settlers,
has given away the peoples heritage till
now few railroads aud nonresident aliens,
individual and corporate, possess a larger
area than that of all our farms between the
two seas. The last democratic administra
tion reversed the improvident and unwise
policy of the republican party touching the
public domain, and reclaimed from corpor-
ations and syndicates, alien and domestic,
and restored to the people nearly one hun
dred million acres of valuable land to be sa-
credly held as homesteads for our citizens,
and we pledge ourselves to continue this
policy until every acre of land so unlawfully
held shall be reclaimed and restored to the
people.
SILVER AND GOLD.
Section Z. We denounce the republican
legislation known as the Sherman act OF