The Indiana State sentinel. [volume] (Indianapolis) 1868-1895, 1894-09-05

hopes and hearty approval the action
of the house of representatives, in the
framing and passing of a measure bear
ing the badges of democratic principles,
and fraught with promised benefits 10
all the people. You have followed with
waning hopes and angry disapprOVal
the tedious and tortuOus passage Of
that bill through the senate. and seen
that despite a nominal jority in
that body the great trusts and monopo-
lies were still able to write their taxes,
as they had done under republican rule,
in some Of its important schedules. The
burden upon you is the same whether
they use a democratic or a republican,
as their amanuensis. But the wrong
TO you is infinitely the greater when
those who bear the commission Of your
own party. thus prove faithless 10 its
highest duties.
81 need not recite to you the successive
steps, the material and baneful alter
nations through which the bill quietly
passed into law without the signature
or the president, who was elected upon
the issue Of tariff reform and who an
ucipated as the signal triumph and his
toric achievement of his administration
the privilege Of affixing his name to a
genuine and thorough reform bill.
You know by what influences this was
brought about. The country knows and
history will know where to put the re-
sponsibility for our partial failure TO re-
deem our pledges TO the people, and
our partial failure TO dislodge the great
privileged interests from our tariff.
am not sure that this very failure may
not be the harbinger and assurance Of
a speedier and more complete triumph
of commercial freedom than the smooth
and unobstruCted passage of the house
bill would have been. The American
people 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 a sin
gle great trust empowered by our tariff
laws to control the production and sale
of necessary of life parceling out the
country with its partners and using its
law-made wealth and power 10 thwart
the best efforts of the people TO reduce
their own taxation. They have seen ii
hold up congress for weeks and have
heard its representatives boldly declare
that there would be no tariff bill in
which their interests were not protected
and they have realized the final fulfill
ment of that boast. When the sugar
trust thus challenges the American peo-
pie to contest of strength its days are
numbered, its temporary triumph is its
Speedier and more compete overthrow,
and with its overthrow will vanish its
sister brood Of mOnOpolies that are
strong through its support.
But, my friends. there is another and
a brighter side to this picture. With all
many protective duties, its Objectionable
sugar schedule. and it's excessive duties
on cOttOns and WOOlens and metals, the
new bill carries in ii very substantial re-
lief 10 the people, and must be accepted
as a substantial beginning of thorough
and progressive tariff reform. 1t means
cheaper clothing, cheaper pottery and
many other necessaries for the people.
1t means freer and larger commerce with
those nations that buy our farm prod
ucts and consequently larger and better
markets for our farmers. 1t means
transfer of some of the burdens of gov
eminent from what goes out for the
! daily purchase of the necessaries of life
TO that which comes in over and above
the amount needed for such purchases.
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 q
democratic bill. But. as the president
we'll said, we have obtained a vantage
ground from which we shall continue to
shell the camp of monopoly. The day
of mad protection is over in this country;
McKinleyism will disappear as a dark
and hideOus blight from our statute
books. The fight will go on. not, may be-
in such a general engagement and pro-
tracted struggle as we have just passed
through, but that steady and resistless
! pressure that will take one after an
other Of the strongholds of privilege I'M
til all shall disappear before the advance
of public opinion and public emancipa-
ton.
81 have dwelt at somelength upon these
phases of our tariff struggle which are
naturally and properly uppermost in the
mind of every genuine democrat. We
have a right to confess our own short
cOmings as measured by the high stand
ard of our own principles and profess
sions. We have right to hold our own
E-.s@ IL
which duty and party fidelity placed
upon them. But all this does not imply
dissatisfaction with our own party as
whole, or distrust as to its meanings and
intentions. If the clOseness of the vote
in one house Of congress gave oppor-
tunity for q few to combine against the
people and against all the rest of their
party and abstract its faithful efforts to
redeem its pledges, the overwhelming
mass of the democrats in the country are
subject to no just criticism. They have
kept the faith. They have been true to
their principles. We may ourselves de-
nounce or bitterly condemn those that
failed us in this fight. We are not
therefore subject to condemnation by
our opponents. If we have done less in
the way of relieving the peoples burdens
than we had hoped and promised, they
would have done nothing at all. If
we have anywhere uncovered
trust and found it too strong for our
complete dislOdgment in the first at
tempt. we have never failed to find them
sturdily and sOlidly arrayed for its de-
Tense. The weapons with which mo-
nopoly has fought US they have forged
and tempered and supplied The en-
trenchments and fOrtresses behind which
privilege has shielded itself from our at
tack they have builded for it, stone by
stone and stronghold by stronghold"