Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1894-06-21
BowOITCH, WEBSTER { co.
The Surrender Proceeda.

The Dill or sale was pronounced at the
outset a surrender of every Democratic
principle or profession. But there was
yet room for Democratic senators to make
their own surrender more complete and
humilating, and they have been doing it.
Senator Lodge has a faculty of hitting
the truth. and in his speech on Thursday
he described the measure as "a bad pro-
tective bill, an unjust protective bill, but
still protective bill" Free trade, with
every branch of government in its hands,
had met disastrous defeat. The doctrine
on which this congress had been elected
was defeated, because the great forces of
the country were against it. The whole
tide of human thought was against it.
The whole tide OF human endeavor and
human advance was against it. These
pregnant words lack only the explana-
ton that crushing majorities against the
Democratic party at elections last fall
and this spring had made it impossible
for that party to carry out its destructive
purpose, and compelled it to buy. by sur
render of every Democratic principle,
votes enough to pass something that
could be palmed off on the ignorant as
new tariff. shameless in sectionalsm and
spiteful in its attack on northern capital
and industry.
The surrender is bee oming abject. The
new cotton schedule, although 30 per cent
lower in its average Of duties than the
present tariff, discriminates laboriously
and infinitely for the advantage of GER
tain producers, so that it is more compli-
Gated and hard to understand than any
other tariff ever enacted. The agents of
manufacturers who contrived it, and in
duced the senatorial auctioneers to accept
it as the price of certain votes for the
whisky and sugar trusts, are probably the
only people in the world who can tell just
how high the proposed duties are. or how
effective they will be in excluding foreign
goods of particular kinds Next comes
modified wooden schedule, which has
strictly business fashion. Votes for the
sugar trust and its munificent bounty of
$40, OOO. 600 must be paid for. The Demo
cratic vote buyers have got beyond caring
how much contempt they cast on the pro-
LESSONS and pledges of their party.
1t is plain already that the country, by
| whipping the Democratic party into alb
ject abandonment of its principles, may
sequences of Democratic success. In an
hour of supreme folly the voters deliv
cred over the government to party
solemnly pledged to hold protection I'M
constitutional. and to eliminate it from
the tariff. Had the party been honest
enough to act according to its profess
sions, thousands of mills and mines,
shops and factories, must have been
i. r. T.. =,
the destroying hand of reform" So far
the country actually gains through the
corruption and faithlessness of the men
it intrusted with power. But the dis
asters inevitably to result from the bill
even as it has been modified will be found
quite enough. No new tariff would have
been proposed had the Democrats hon.
| estly sought to respect and obey the W II
of the people. Neither would any new
| tariff whatever go through the senate If
that party had not consented, for purely
selfish and partisan reasons, to sell itself
to the trusts and monopolies
Free wool under such circumstances is
not only a wrong but au insult. 1t is a
| contemptuous notice to the entire body of
| farmers that a rich trust, with money for
corruption fund at election. and with
shares of stocks for speculative senators,
can get from a Democratic congress
$40, 0O0, 900 to be extorted from the con-
| sumers of sugar, while all the wool
growers cannot get from such a congress
even low revenue duty on wool. When
the farmers compare the prohibitive
duties on certain wooden goods, which the
| agents of favored foreign manufacturers
have contrived, with the refusal of rev.
| enue duty on wool, their opinion of the
Democratic party and of Tariff Reform
will be one that can only be adequately
expressed in majorities like those Of Ohio
| and Oregon.
A bad protective tariff, an indecent and
| unjust protective tariff. tariff which
robs the millions Of farmers and working
men in order to enrich few monopolies,
is not what the country wants. Instead
of the kind of protection which trusts
| dictate in order to secure their power to
plumber the people, voters will demand in
future a tariff for the production of all
home industries, framed by honest be-
levers in protection. One trial of Demo
| cratic reform" will be enough for half q
century.-[New York Tribune.