Staunton spectator. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1849-1896, 1894-09-05
his administration the privilege of
affixing his name to genuine and
thorough reform bill

his administration the privilege of
affixing his name to genuine and
thorough reform bill
WHERE THE RESPONSIBILITY RESTS
You know by what influences this
was brought about. The country
knows and history will know where to
put the responsibility for our partial
failure to redeem our pledges to the
people and our partial failure to dis
lodge the great privileged interests
from our tariff. | am not sure that
this very failure may not be the har-
| binger and assurance of a speedier and
more complete triumph of commercial
| freedom than the smooth and unob-
structed passage of the House bill
would have been. The American PEG
pie are aroused as hardly anything else
could have aroused them to the deadly
menace which protection begets to the
purity and the very existence of free
government. They have seen single
great trust empowered by our tariff
laws to control the production and
sale of a necessary of life, parceling out
the country with its partners and using
its law made wealth and power to
thwart the best efforts of the people to
reduce their own taxation. They have
seen it hold up Congress for weeks and
have heard its mipions boldly declare
that there should be no tariff bill in
which its interests were not fully pro
tected. and they have realized the final
| fulfillment of that boast. When the
Sugar Trust thus challenges the
American people to a contest of
strength its days are numbered, its
temporary triumph is it's speedier and
more complete overthrow, and with its
overthrow will vanish its sister brood
of monOpOlies that are strong through
its support.
| ANOTHER AND BRIGHTER SIDE.
| "But, my friends, there is another
and Il brighter side to this picture
With all its manifold failures, it's final
retention of many protective duties,
its Objectionable sugar schedule and
its excessive duties on cottons and
woOleus and metals, the new bill car
ries in it very substantial relief to the
American people and must be accepted
as a substantial beginning of thorough
and progressive tariff reform. 1t means
cheaper clothing, cheaper tools, cheap
er pottery and many other necessaries
| for the people. 1t means freer and
| larger commerce with those nations
that buy our farm products, and con-
sequent larger and better markets for
our farmers. 1t means transfer of
some of the burdens of government
from what goes out for the daily pu :
chase of the necessaries of life to that
which comes in over and above the
amount needed for such purchase If
we denOunce some of its duties and
rates it is because what may be much
lower than the duties and rates of the
Mckinley bill are yet enormities in a
democratic bill.
GAINED A VANTAGE GROUND.
"But, as the President well said, we
have gained vantage ground from
which we shall continue to shell the
camp of monopoly. The day of mad
protection is over in this country Nc
kinleyism will disappear as dark and
hideous blight from our statute books
The fight will go on, not it may be in
such general engagement and pro
tracted struggle as we have just passed
through, but in that steady and re
sistless pressure that will take one
after another of the strongholds OF
privilege until all shall disappear be
fore the advance of public opinion anC
public emancipation.
II have dwelt at some length upor
those phases of our tariff struggle which
are naturally and properly uppermos
in the mind of every genuine demo
GRAFT. We have a right to confess oul
own shortcomings as measured by the
high standard of our principles an(
professions. We have right to hole
our own faithless servants to that re
sponsibility which duty and party
fidelity placed upon them.
THE MASSES HAVE KEPT THE FAITH
But all this does not imply dissatis
faction with our own party as Who'll,
; Or distrust as to its meanings and in
tentions. If the closeness of the vot,
in one house of Congress gave oppor
tunity for few to combine agains
the people and against all the rest O
their party and obstruct it's faithful
efforts to redeem its pledges, the over
whelming mass of the democrats in tn,
country are subject to no just crit
cism. They have kept the faith. They
have been true to their principles. W.
may ourselves denounce or bitterll
condemn those who failed us in THU
; fight. We are not, therefore, subiec
; to condemnation by our opponents
) II we have done less in the way of re
loving the peoples burdens than WE
had hoped and promised they would
have done nothing at all. If we have
anywhere uncovered a trust and foun(
it too strong for our complete dislodge
ment in the first attempt, we have
never failed to find them sturdiiy ant
solidly arrayed for its defense. The
weapons with which monopoly ha.
fought us they have forged and TEN
pered and supplied. The intrench
| nfc nj LoI
privilege has shielded itself from oul
attack they have builded for it, stone
by stone and stronghold by stronghold