Birmingham age-herald., 1894-10-16

should make all of it's supporters, as well as it's author. anxious for it's repeal.e
 h 1890 1t enacted the robber tariff of Mc- Kinley, not to provide revenue, but ex- pressly to reduce revenue, by increasing the rate of tariff taxation. By this tariff the government was robbed of the reve- nues necessary to meet it's expenses and maintain it's credit; the masses of the peo- pie, the consumers, were placed under the iron heel of the petted classes ofprotection; the cost of living increased and the means of making living diminished iu equal de- gree, and thousands of industrious and coEtented producers and workers were made idle, and their families reduced to want and suffering. By itand other vicious legislation, and the criminal extravaganza of the Congress which enacted it, the pub lie treasury was emptied, and the country brought, before the close of Harrison 's re- pudiated administration, into all the con- ditions for bringing in the disasters and calamities which have come upon the country like flood.
 It is responsible for the business prostra- tion of the last two years and the financial panic of 1898, for these were the natural and legitimate results of its vicious legisla- tion of the last thirtyfyearsi culminating in McKinleyism and Reedism. That this is true is evidenced by the facts that the four years of MT. Cleveland's first administra- tion was an era of unequaled prosperity among all classes of the people throughout the country; that the hard times began in 1890 after Harrison had been President one year; that the magnificent surplus of hum dreds of millions of dollars turned over on the 4th of March, 1889, by Democratic administration to it's Republican successor, with every branch of the government un. der it's control, had entirely disappeared before March 4, 1893, when a Democratic administration got control of Federal affairs, and Harrison's Secretary of the Treasury had in fact ordered the plates upon which to print bonds to sell to raise money to meet the current expenses of the government.
 Four years of Republican administration had dissipated the greatest surplus ever ac- cumulated in the treasury, bankrupted the government and impoverished the people, while the classes, combines, trusts and monopolies had grown enormously rich. Yet, the authors of these woes, justly re- sponsible for them, with an effrontery to which Beelzebub himself would bow in profound admiration, strive to screen them- selves from the censure due their crimes by charging these natural and logical effects of them up to the anticipation of imaginary evils to come from Democratic efforts to repair the ruin already wrought and to provide against further ravages by them. And for weeks the prime perpetrators of this crowning atrocity of class legislation, Mckinley, Reed and Harrison, have been ,ps Nov md North like escaped bedlamites bowling of calamities never to come, amid the din and roar of reviving industries, enterprise and prosperity.
 Now, the Democratic record in the thirty two years, 1861 to 1898, was necessarily d. most entirely negatives; that is, made iA resisting pernicious Republican measures, and Heaven only knows where the country zsould now be but for this negative record. But since March 4, 1893, it has made an affirmative record, aud it is all on the right side.
 When the Democratic party took control of tho government, March 4, 1893, the country was in a state of absolute business prostration and financial collapse; sick in- deed, almost to dissolution. Like the ty- phoid patient after severe and long protracted attack of that wasting disease, the nation could not recover at once, even under the skillful management of the Dem- ocratic party. A period of convalescence had to ensue; time and attention were nec- essary to restore it to something like it's normal condition. Upon the Democratic party fell the duty of bringing the patient back to life and health and vigorous strength. Let's see what it has accom- plished in short space of eighteen months.
 It has repealed the infamous Federal elec- tion law, contrived and used for partisan purposes; an insult to every State in the Union and to every citizen of it, aad con- stant menace to personal liberty and to fair and peaceable elections.
 It repealed the purchasing clause of the Sherman act, which was the real cause, or the pretext, for the calamitous Republican banker's panic of 1898. This repeal was the beginning step, and a necessary one, in the opinion of wise men towards the restoration of silver to it's proper, rightful place, in our system of currency and coinage.
 Bv honest and economical administration of the government it has reduced it's gen. eral expenditures s2s, 1000, 900 over those of the preceding year. By greatly simplified and improved husi- ness methods in the departments at Wash ington, it has abolished more than 500 use- less Federal offices, and thereby lessened governmental expenses annually to the ex. tent of near S1 ,000 ,000.
 It raised the tax on whisky from 90 cents to $1 10 per gallon, and taxed playing cards cents per pack, thereby relieving the sobriety and industry of the country of an additional S23, ,000 ,0O0 of taxation. It repealed the Mckinley high protective tariff, that eliminating atrocity of class legislation, notwithstanding the bitterest