The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1892-07-06


pose of revenue only" it contradicts
many declarations in favor of protection
made by democratic leaders and plat
forms. So great a constitutional law
yer as Calhoun-the greatest the demo-
cratic party ever had-found no diff
Guilty in reconciling the principles of
protection with the constitution until
he saw that Southern interests called
for a different Interpretation. And
how many times have we heard demo-
cratic orators and papers say that
system of moderate protection " met
their hearty approval? Up to the pres
ent time the cry has been that the
republican party was too anxious to up
hold excessively high duties for the
benefit of few republican monopolists.
1t was all bluff and buncombe, of
course; the animus of democratic oppo-
sition to protection has always been
the free-trade idea. The truth of the
matter is that the leaders of the party
have feared to ALLEVIATE the minority in
their party who really believed, and
still believe, in protection. A sop had
to be thrown to them, and that sop was
for years moderate protection. Pos
sibly it is allowable to rank free trade
as fundamental principle " of the
democratic party, since the party has
always leaned that way, but funda-
mental" ordinarily implies common
place in language and thought. Ger
tainly the language of democratic or
gans, orators and platforms has never
before been explicitly and unmistakably
in favor of free trade.
The plank points to "the dizziness
land distress, the wage reductions and
strikes in the iron trade as the best pos
sible evidence that no such prosperity
has resulted from the Mckinley act"
This is the language of demagogy. If
the iron trade is dull Just now, after the
enormous boom it has had in past years,
what, pray, would be its condition if
free trade had been the rule in the past
twenty years? Iron and steel manu-
facturers have been so encouraged by
protection that the market has been
more than supplied from our own fur
naces and shops. Do the trainers of
the democratic platform suppose, more
over, that there would have been no la
Dor troubles in this country had the
Mckinley bill not been enacted? An
other contemplate piece of demagogic
deception is contained in the allusion
at the end of the plank to the large
number of mortgages on real estate in
the West. Protection has been an i'm
mense boon to the farmers of this coun-
try. Isn't it bit odd that the demo-
cratic party ascribes the troubles of the
farmer to protection, while the peoples
party thinks they are due to an INSULT
cient currency? The fact is that the
sharp competition of the occupants of
the newest and most easily cultivated
lands of the West with the farmers who
have remained on the less fertile land of
the East has been the ruin of the Eastern
farmers as to the old staples, while the
Eastern farmers have been too back
ward in taking up specialties for which
they were well fitted by location and
character of soil. AS the very fertile
land in the West is about all occupied
and Eastern farmers are coming to un.
derstand that they must specialize and
study the market, the outlook for the
prudent and intelligent farmer is
much brighter than he supposes. Free
silver, or initiation in any form, will III
the end work only disaster. Free trade
is a delusion and snare, and those
who invoke it never have been able
and never will be, TO make it plain how
it can benefit the producers of this
country. 1t is not name to cOnjurt
with.
Eraa CiIyor noro udad