Birmingham state herald. (Birmingham, Ala.) 1895-1897, 1896-07-10
DANIELS SPEECH At CHICAGO.

! triple 1nfamy OF republican legislation.
| The first was aimed not more at the
| south than at the great cities of the east,
| and chief among them the great DEM
ocratic city of New York, with its mag
nificent patronage. That bill got IT'S
death blow in the senate, but there was
not a single democrat in New York or
New England to vote against it.
If you gentlemen have helped to save
| the south, it also has helped to save you
! in the east; but whether the south
| should be saved or not, those great
American republican senators from the
west, Teller and Wolcott, and your
| Joneses and your Stanford of California,
! sunk their partisan feeling on the order
| of their patriotism and came forward to
| the rescue of American institutions.
Grants Dying Vision.
mo man, gentlemen, in this high noon
| of our country's fraternity can revive
| force bills now in this reconciled and re-
| united republic. Our opponents them
| selves have abandoned them. There is
| none that can stand between the union
| of hearts and the union of hands that
| Grant in his dying vision saw was COM
| ing on angels wings to all the sons of
| our common country. When Chicago
| dressed southern graves in flowers she
| buried sectionaliSm under mountain or
| fragrance. When southern soldiers yes
| terday cheered the wounded hero of the
| north in Richmond the south answered
| back: Let us have peace; peace union
| and liberty now and forever.
| LAS the majority of democrats is not
| sectional neither does 1t stand for any
| privileged or classed legislation. The
| active business men of this country, its
| manufacturers, it's merchants, its farm
| ers, its sons of toll in counting room fac
| tory, field and mine, know that con-
| traction of the currency sweeps away
| with the silent and resistless force of
| gravitation the annual profits of their
| enterprises and investments They
| know, too, that the gold standard means
| contraction and the organization of dis
| aster. What hope Is there for the coun-
try and what hope is there for democrat
| cy unless the views of the majority here
shall be adopted? Do not the people
know that 1t was not silver legislation,
but legislation dictated by the advocates
of the gold standard, that has caused and
now continues the financial depression?
Repeal of the Sherman Law.
do they not know that when their de-
mands upon democracy were compiled
with in 1898, and the Sherman law re-
pealed without substitute, that the
very states of the east that demanded
it turned against the democracy who
granted 1t and swept away their majori-
ties in a torrent of ballots? Had the sill
yer men had their way then instead of
the gold monometallists what storms of
abuse would here today be emptied upon
their heads? (Applause.)
But the people, applying the power of
| memory and analysis alike to discover
| the causes of their arrested prosperity,
| need not go far to find them. They do
| not forget when democracy came to pow
| err in 1893 it inherited from its republican
| predecessors the tax system and the cur-
| rency system, of which the Mckinley
law and the Sherman law were the cul-
| minating atrocities.
TT came to power amid panic which
| fifty followed upon their enactment with
| strikes, lock-outs, riots and civic commo-
| tons, while the scenes of peaceful indus
| try in Pennsylvania had become military
| camps. Besides manifold oppressive
features, the Mckinley law had thrown
| away 500, 900, 900 of revenue derived from
sugar under the spectral plea of free
breakfast table and had substituted
| bountieS to sugar planters, thus decreas
ing revenue and increasing expenditure,
thus burning the candle at both ends and
making the people pay at last for the al,
legged free breakfast.
Surplus Converted Into Deficit.
From the joint operation of the Nc
Kinley law and Sherman law an adverse
| balance of trade was forced against us
in 1898, a surplus of s100, 900, 900 in the
treasury was converted into q deficit of
$70,000,000 in 1894, and engraved bonds
prepared by a republican secretary to
borrow money to support the govern
ment were the i'll omens of the preorgan-
lied ruin that awaited the incoming de-
mocracy and a depleted treasury. More
significant still, the very authors of the
| ill-starred Sherman law makeshft were
already at confessional upon the stool of
| penitence and were begging democrats to
| help them to put out the conflagration of
| disaster that they themselves had kin
| died.
$50 far as revenue to support the gov
| eminent is concerned, the democratic
| party, with but a slender majority in
1 the senate, was not long providing4t, and
1 had not the supreme court of the United
| States reversed it's settled doctrines of
| 100 years the income tax incorporated in
| the tariff bill would long since have
| abundantly supplied 1t,
Touches Financial Problem. e
Respecting finance, the republicans,
| populists and democrats, while differing
| upon almost all other SUBJECTS had
united in 1892 in declaring for the resto-
| ration of our American system of bimet-
allsm. By republican and democratic eff
forts alike the Sherman law was swept
from the statute books, the eagerness to
rid the country of that republican incu-
bus being SO great that no prudent eff
fort was made to provide a substitute.
In the very act the Sherman law repealed
| it was declared to be the policy of the
United States of America to continue the
use of both gold and silver as standard
| money, and to coin them into dollars of
equal intrinsic and exchangeable value.
1.-THE republican party has now re-
| nOuflCeu luS CleeN VI It's pldllOIiH anu VI
| our national pledges and presented to the
country the issue of higher taxes, more
| bonds and less money. 1t has proclaimed
at last, throwing away the DISCUSSES, the
British gold standard
Panic and Depression.
1--WE can only expect, should they sue
coed, my countrymen, specimen of panic
and a long protracted period of depres-
sion. Do not ask us. then, to join them
in any of their propositions. Least of
ALL ask not us to join them upon the
money question and fight a sham battle
over settled tariff for the money ques-
ton is the paramount issue before the
American people, and it involves true
Amerioanism more than any economic
issue that ever was presented to presi-
dent at presidential election The ex
listing gold standard, whence comes the
idea that we are upon 1t in every demo-
cratic platform of 1892, and the promise
to hold both gold and silver has been not
from the last enactment of congress on
the subject, which, in repeating the Sher-
| man law pledged the whole country to