The Portland daily press., 1894-08-28
[From the Congressional Record,l

[From the Congressional Record.
Look at the shameful position in
which the surrender that 81 proposed
will put the party that has an over
whelming majority in this House and
the complete control OF all branches Of
the government in its hands. What are
we Democrats to say to our constituents
when, in few days now, we return to
them to render an account of our stew
ardship?
They sent us here to repeal the McKin-
ley bill. They sent us here to wipe out
that system miscalled protection which
we, In our national platform, declared a
fraud and robbery ana pledged our
selves to wipe out. They took US at our
word; they put the whole national gov
eminent in Democratic hands. Two
years nearly have passed, years of unpre-
cedented suffering to our constituents,
the working masses, yet we have given
them no relief. What are we to say to
them when they ask US what we have
done? Are we to brazeD it out? Are we
to point with pride" to what is popular
~ known as the German Surrender bill
and which this House is now asked to
accept as its own? Are we to tell them
that if it is not what they asked for and
what we promised, it is at least better
than the Mckinley bill. and that by and
by, ii they will continue US, in power,
we will try to do'a little better still?
II we do, they will treat us with the
scorn that such a barefaced plea will de-
serve. The German bill is not better
than the Mckinley, measured even
by the standard of rates. Most of
it's reductions are nominal reductions,
reductions that are merely the taking of
useless bricks off wall which is left
sufficiently high to give the benefciaries
OF protection all the protection that a
tariff can give. 1t is more fully and
emphatically a trust bill than was even
the Mckinley bill. All the trusts were
and devices lie hidden to the general
public in its technical language no
mani do not believe even Senator Cor
man-yet really knows.
1t is an improvement on the McKin-
ley hill in free wool and free lumber and
some other small additions to the free
list. But, ON the other hand, it is clear
~ worse than the Mckinley bill in that
it taxes sugar Now, supposing that the
trusts that have really had the making
up of this bill have taken no advantage
OF the experience they have had since
the Mckinley bill was passed and that
the only large difference between the
Mckinley bill and the German bill
is that the one taxed wool and the other
taxes sugar. which is the tax the people
will feel most keenly and directly-a tax
on wool or tax on sugar? No human
being eats wool or uses wool in any way
until 1t has ben manufactured, and the
manufacturers of woolens are still care
fully protected in the German bill by
relatively higher tariff than even the
Mckinley bill gave them. But every
man, woman and child uses sugar. 1t is
one of the prime necessaries of life
And there is.not a housewife in the
land who will not feel that she is robbed
by our Democratic Tariff Reform
when she finds that where she got three
pounds of sugar under the Mckinley bill
she now, under the German bill, for the
same money, gets but two. You and,
l with our official incomes of $4,000 a
year, may not feel the tax; Mr.. Cleve-
land, with his official income of $4,000 a
year, may not feel it; our. colleagues of
the Senate, especially those who may
have bought Sugar Trust stock at the
right time, may not feel it, but the
great mass of the people, by whose votes
we are here-the great mass of the peo-
pie who must count every penny of i'll
comes not suffi Gent to enable them to |
live in halfway decent comfort, they |
will feel it. they will feel it at once and |
feel it bitterly. Again will they get an |
object lesson-that the tariff is a tax. |
Will you dare to go to them and point to |
sugar as a sample of the way in which |
you have carried out your pledges to re- |
duoe taxation?
And when they ask you what this tax |
is for, what will you tell them? Will you |
quote to them Mr.. Cleveland's letter to |
Mr.. Wilson on the propriety of taxing SUI
gar? Will you quote to them Mr.. Car |
isles statement that the needs of the |
Treasury require the ia Xati0n of sugar? |
know, and you know, and the people |
know,-l WAS about to say that every |
dog that barks in the streets of the CAPT |
tai knows-that the real purpose of i'm |
posing this tax is not to give revenue to
the government, but revenue to the bood- |
lers. You cannot disguise it from the
people, for the people know it already,
that the purpose of this sugar tax is to
put millions ana millions in the pockets
OF men who are already milliona;res by
robbing the people. They know that
this tax on sugar has been brought
through every step of it's way-carried
by such open, undisguised corruption
as has never been Haunted in their f. ces
before; they know that the Sugar Trust
has purchased this privilege of taxing
them, and that though the price it may
have paid may be Millions it will receive
back millions before the Treasury gets
one cent.
., Mr.Speaker l stand aghast at the
,fatuity of the Democratic party as repre-
Scented here. When the Mckinley bill
was passed with its one bright spot,
free sugar, we single tax Democrats con-
graduated each other. "There goes,n we
said, zone way of raising public rev. nue.
by the taxation of labor never to be re-
vived again; Tor no party can ever rise
in the United States that will dare in
times of peace to try to tax sugar now
that the neonIe have found out. Who nays