The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1895-06-10
DEMOCRACY AND HOME INDUSTRY.

The devil could scarcely inspire a
falsehood so perverse as the usual
taunt by Republicans that the Demo
American, or home, industries. The
Democratic party has been from its
! foundation opposed to the policy of the
granting of special privileges to in
dividuals or corporations in order to
/ encourage manufactures, not because
/ Of hostilities to home productions, but
( because it was foreseen that the inev-
liable result would be to create an
aristocracy founded upon special priv
ileges and immunities.
The founders of the party and in
spirators Of that policy had just estab-
lished a democratic commonwealth,
which. with all the ingenuity they
possessed, they intended would be last
ing; and the Democratic party was
from its birth imbued with the fear of
its founders, and the founders of the
republic, that only through policy of
granting special privileges to a IA
vored few the conditions for the estab-
lishment of an aristocracy could be
created. Events in no way involved
in the principle or the policy conspired
to negative both, and the result feared,
foreseen and forewarned by the found
ers of the nation is actually achieved,
and we have an aristocracy created
from special privileges, and the prac-
teal subversion of the government by
the beneficiaries of the popular
bounty 1t is entrenched and inter
twined in our financial and CONNER
cial habits. 1t has silently eaten into
the popular mind through the susten-
ance afforded by a generation of hol-
low prosperity, that only now has be-
come apparent to the popular percep-
ton in its hydra-headed hideousness
through the over-reaching quality of
its own selfshness.
Just now there is a prevalent i'm
preston among Democrats that it is
better to let the tariff question rest,
while the party engages in removing
some of the dismal results that have
come through its application during
the past generation. This perhaps is
justified on the surface of things, for
the reason that the question now is
not how to prevent the creation of an
aristocracy based upon special privi-
leges, but how to undo the process
through which the creation of an aris-
tocracy has become an accomplished
fact.
We have, indeed, the tariff question
as an element in the question of special
privileges, but the tariff is but one of
the many forms of taxation of all for
the benefit of the few, which has come
through the generic policy Of protec-
ton and favoritism that underlies
every political theory of the Republic
can party.
BY surrendering the control of this
nation to the money power they at
forded the favored few a weapon more
destructive even than the tariff, and
the few have taken advantage of it to
impose taxes upon all industry at will,
by the process of lifting and elevating
the value standard, now visi-
BILE in our silver agitation and
industrial stagnation. By the pro-
cess of land and cash subvention they
have taken the birthright of oppor-
tunity from the citizen and added it
to the list of special privileges Of a
restricted class. If the trades unions
are sullen and even at times tempes-
tuous, it is because they have wit.
messed the gradual destruction of the
liberty of the citizen and his COM
plete helplessness before the inroads
of the Moloch of special privilege.
When the genius of oligarchy and
special privilege is analysed its gene
sis always will be found to be-tax.
1t was the heroic self-sacrifice of the
Romans in the Punic wars that led
to the enslavement of the free peo-
pie of Italy by the class that had