Democratic Northwest. [volume] (Napoleon, Ohio) 1869-1894, 1893-02-09

claim to be with all the processes of the
building up OF such community as
that in which you and live. l had the
pecu ar fortune togrow up with a peo-
Pile from its first beginning. There is,
perhaps, no one within the sound Of
my voice, unless he was with me at
the time of which / speak, who has
lived in prlmeval forest among peo-
pie commencing at the beginning in all
things. Nearly fifty years ago my
father was preaching in a log meeting
house on the borders of Putnam and
Allen counties, in the southern skirts
of that vast, level, alluvial tract Of
land, then known as the Black Swamp,
extending from the shores of Lake
Erie southwestwardly through Ohio
and into Indiana With length of one
hundred miles aG1 breadth of from
twenty to twenty-five miles, as level
as the bottom of a lake, which it had
formerly been, densely covered with
the greatest forest which has existed
on the surface of the earth In our day.
The bodies of the trees were so close
together as to form q wooden wall a
few yards in front of the eye. So close,
that they were without branches or
leaves except at the summit. With
black soil soaked with water, strewn
with fallen trunks of trees covered with
moss and underbrush of every sort;
roads were impossible except by sleds
in the winter or for few weeks in the
late summer. There were no railways,
no canals, no means ofexit orentrance
for the greater part of the year except
on foot or horseback. Into this forest
came poor families from New
England, Pennsylvania, Maryland,
Virginia and Kentucky, settling
upon such occasional sand ridges,
old lake beaches covered with pop
lar, walnut, maple and beach, as Of
fered some refuge from the universal
ly prevalent moisture. So unbroken
was the wilderness, that when many
years after my first recollection the
Dayton and Michigan Railroad was
cut through this forest passing by our
station at Columbus Grove, there was
a tangent to the north of us, perhaps
where Deshler now stands, seventeen
miles in length, without break In the
forest, except that made by the railway
cut-no house, no fields, no clearing,
no deadening. Nothing but the aisle
cut through the immense, lofty forest
of elm.
That forest is now gone: Great ditch
es as large us the Erie canal have drawn
off the water, stave factories formed in
echolon have advanced upon that for
est and cut it into slaves. The patient
industry offorty years have changed
everything, and you may now ride on
macadamized roads or roll upon rail-
way trains, and look over one vast, fer
tile granary, a region like a prairie of
the West, covered with fine farm
houses and buildings, the homes
of a happy and prosperous people; but
the day of which 1 Ispeak there was no in
such things as commerce, or manufac-
ture, or money. The only use for mon
ey then, as indeed at any time, was to
pay taxes, but the taxes were small in
amount, although it was more trouble
for the farmer to pay his 81 tax than to
conduct all the other operations of the
year. All business was done by eX-
change of products fruit, ofwheat,
Of -four, of live stock, of days work,
and after little by store orders. The
surplus products were taken by the
storekeepers, who entered up the
amount in amythical dollar to our
credit, and when the season allowed
carried off the wheat and the hogs, the
ginseng and the May-apple root to the
lake of the East, aud there got credit,
against which he purchased the sugar
and the coffee, tea and other luxuries
or necessaries we required.
And so this little community grew,
n1as1 10
years the railways introuced into it a
new element, and one of disturbance,
paper money. Everybody wanted it.
Struggled, saved, traded. 1t became
the fashion to obtain it, and in d little
while the engraved note of the Seneca
County Bank were held by all the
people In our neighborhood. And then
a calamity came upon us. l we'll re-
member that pail that hung over our
people. They felt that the end of the
world had come when the news came
that the Seneca County Bank had fail
ed, and that the fruits of their adven-
ture, their resolution, their labor and
savings, had turned into leaves.
My friends, have seen panics in
Wall street, business apprehensions
In great cities, but have never seen a
people suffer from the head of the
family to the smallest, the youngest
child, as did the community in which |
| lived at the time Of the failure of the
Seneca County Bank. Since that time
we have seen built up great system
OF tariff taxation based on the false
principles offavortism and protection,
and have experienced the ills that can
come from fiuctuating, bottomless
paper monev, happily lifted up and re.
deemed at the greatest sacrifice how
great those of you know who were en-
gagged in any occupation in 1873 to 1878, |
or who WITNESSED the labor troubles of
1877, am more confirmed in nv be-
lief that it is the duty of the govern
ment to provide an enduring, a stable
and an honest currency, and to levy
taxes uniformly without favoritism,
and only for the purpose of conducting
an economical government.
l do not propose to discuss the ques-
ton of whether the Government should
attempt to create or build up American
industries of any kind by the use of its
taxing-power-n discriminat.
ing and therefore notwithstanding
to corruption, therefore destructive to
any society or government, because
that question has been answered by the
American people, for the present at
least, and their verdict must be carried
into execution, But some of nv Ohio
friends ask me ifthis judgment is to be
executed tardily or speedily. II it is
to be destructive to existing business,
and a bar more or less to new enter
prises. Speaking from my own indi-
vidual opioion, formed from my own
in the business world, say
that any danger ofany de.
struction which could possibly come
has already arrived. Any bar which
could ever be interposed is already here.