The Bossier banner. [volume] (Bellevue, Bossier Parish, La.) 1859-1952, 1897-06-24
The Passing of McEnery.
From the N. o. States, April 24.]

ton, printed in the Picayune Friday
morning, informs US that Senator
McEnery, of this State, stated before
sub committee of the Finance Com
mittee of the Senate that he had long
been aprotectiouist, and now favored
protection for all American industries,
including a protective tariff on wool.
This is the first time that the Dem
ocrats of Louisiana ever learned that
EcEnery was a protectionist, and, if
it be true, We are constrained to say
that for twenty years he has not lived
an open political life, and has enjoyed
the donors and emoluments of Office
dispensed by the Democrats when he
was by no means Democrat.
If Senator McEnery is, and was
protectionist, on what principle of
sincerity was it that in several Con-
gressional and national elections,
which were carried on the principle
of tariff for revenue only and in
direct antagonism to the principle of
protection, he was one of the chief,
if be was not the leader, of the Dem
ocratic party of Louisiana?
The junior Louisiana Senator was
quite emphatic in his demands for
protection for sugar, rice and lumber.
Hence, it is assumed that the Senator
is looking to those interested in these
industries for future political life and
preferment. Well and good At the
same time he must expect to be aban-
doned by the cotton growers and
other industries in North and Central
Louisiana and by the working class
of the towns and cities. Under the
policy of protection these classes in
Louisiana have been for more than
twenty years taxed fully five millions
of dollars per annum Cor in that time
gross amount of one hundred mil
lions of dollars) for the benefit of the
favored classes, and it is this enor-
nous taxation that has impoverished
the cotton farmers of the State and
ground the workingmen under the
heel of the Plutocracy, and thus
brought about the present impover-
ishment of all industrial classes in
Louisiana outside of the sugar
planters.
This is no wild statement. More
than ten years ago under tariff
measure much milder than the Nc
Kinley bill, Senator Coke, of Texas,
estimated the incidental or robber
taxation, or the taxation of the pro-
ducers OF the country for the benefit
of the Plutocracy, at S6O0,OOO,OO per
annum on the whole body of the
American people. In the second
Cleveland campaign that grand old
Democrat and statesman, Allen G.
Thurman, then candidate for Vice
President, estimated that taxation to
be $500, 100000 per annum; later, but
before the passage of the Mckinley
bill Frank Hurd, perhaps at that
time the ablest young statesman in
the Union, declared on an exhaustive
calculation, that the incidental taxa.
ton imposed upon the poor for the
further enrichment of the rich,
amounted annually to one hundred
dollars out of every four hundred
dollars earned by every head of
family, or rs per cent of the wages of
the working classes. After the cleo
ton in 1892 the New York Herald
employed number of experts in and
out of the Treasury, men perfectly
familiar with such business, and
showed on their calculations, that the
amount of incidental or robber taxa
ton under the Mckinley bill amount
ed annually to one billion five hundred
millions of dollars. It is this sort of
taxation that has impoverished dur
ing the past thirty years the Ameri-
can farmers and working people and
by which the enormous and abnormal