Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1894-03-01
Mr.. MILLlKEN'S SPEECH
Upon The Wilson Bill! January 80. 1894.

The JOURNAL feels that its readers will
be interested in perusing the excellent
speech against the Wilson bill delivered by
Hon. Seth l.. Milliken in the National
House of Representatives the 30th day OF
January. We present below liberal ex-
tract which embraces its most salient points
Mr.. Milliken said:
Mr.. Chairman: do not know that any
discussion of the tariff question can be use
full. A Democratic Congress, joined to its
idol of free trade, can hardly be expected
to profit by it, and the people do not want
it.
A theory, however plausibly presented,
will have little weight with those who see
its shadow darken their homes with desola-
ton and fill the land with despair. 1t is
work for their hands to do, bread and clothes
and shelter for themselves and their fami-
lies, and not finely phrased platitudes that
they want in these Democratic times.
But these considerations have no weight
with the leaders of the Democratic party.
The wall from dying industries,
unemployed labor, growing hunger.
and shivering nakedness, they hear
with the Indifference and contempt of Nero,
who fiddled while Rome was burning. They
have an old and nearly exploded theory,
which has fingered with more or less of life
in hospital since the days of Calhoun,
which blazed up in notification and cul-
minated in the Rebellion; which was de-
clared in the Confederate constitution and
promulgated in the platform of the last
Democratic national convention, which
they pretend TO support, and they will
adhere to that pretension, though every
person in the land starve before their eyes.
And it is only pretension. They say they
infict all this misery upon the people be-
cause they we're elected to enact q tariff
70, revenue only.
But how do they keep their premise in
the bill before the committee? Why, is il
replete with what they call robbery, only
in less degree than the present law.
A tariff for revenue only, which they
declare to be the only constitutional tariff
that can be enacted, is one which raises the
largest revenues vi h the smallest duties.
1t must be laid upon articles which we do
not produce-such as tea. coffee and sugar.
But the Wilson bill leaves all these art-
cles on the free list.
Itrepeals or reduces duties sufficiently
to destroy home production and impoverisl
American workingmen, and then seeks to
tax the people through the internal revenue
| to make up the deficit which it creates.
When last the Democratic party had full
control of the government it attempted t.
destroy its existence.
That attempt cost them thirty.txo years
of exclusion from power. 1t should have
cost them exclusion from. power forever
But the people are forgivina, and indeed
| forgetful.
They received the Democratic party back
as the father received the prodigal son after
his wandering and wickadness, ard killed
the fatted calf for it. They placed it once
more in power. They gave it full contro
of the country. They placed in its hand,
the entire law making functions. To il
alone the people have had to look, since
last March, for good government.
| 1t promised them great reforms, better
times, lower prices for articles of con stump
ton, and better prices for labor; large
profits for the merchant, better returns {,
the farmer, more prosperity to the manu-
factursr, greater thrift and more comfol
to the people.
! It assa,led the Mckinley bill - the roo