People's party paper. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1891-1898, 1897-08-06


and increase our export trade, for that
day has come under the Wilson bill
We are now having the greatest export
trade in our history.
The fiscal year of the United States
Treasury Department closes with the
3Oth day of June, and the official state
ment of the exports and imports for the
year just ended breaks the record in
several important particulars.
The total exports of merchandise for
the year were $1,051, 987,091 the larg-
est in our history. The nearest ap-
proach made to this was in 1892, when
the total volume of exports of all kinds
was $1,O1O, 278, 14S, The volume of ex-
ports of domestic merchandise in that
year was 81, OBS, 732, oil, while last year
these exports amounted to $2.032, $685.
$50.
The excess of exports over imports
last year was also the greatest on re-
cord, amounting to $2s7 613, 1856, the
largest previous bA balances having been
1864, 661, 500 in 1879 and $3.50, 712, us in
1878. In 1892, the record year in ex-
ports, the balance of trade in our favor
was only 1902, SIS, $50.
If these figures prove anything, they
prove that in it's relation to trade the
Wilson tariff is not failure" They
show also that the people of the United
States are laying the foundation for an
improved condition of affairs in the
near future if Congress shall not inter
fere to prevent it.
REPUBLICANS ARE WRECKED.
All the prophecies and pretenses of
our Republican friends have gone to
wreck and ruin under the test of time
and experience. They will have to in
vent new methods of deception in the
future.
This congress is now closing on a
measure which assumes that the Amer
lean people and American genius can
not compete with the people of Europe
in the production of the necessary ar
ticles of the highest civilization. This
1 deny. We are today shipping the
product of American handiwork, the
products of agriculture, in greater
quantities than at any previous time
in our history, under the inspiration
of the advantages given to the people
by a comparatively low tariff,
This Dingley bill will, by increasing
the value of coal, iron and lumber to
our own people, cut off large share
of our export trade that we now enjoy.
Let us for a little while turn to the
laboring men who have lost faith in
the theory that high taxation makes
high wages. just now, while the Re-
publican party are forcing through
Congress a tariff higher than ever be-
fore, under the false plea that it is
solely for the benefit of the laboring
man hundreds and thousands of honest
men have gone out on strike to force
employment at wages that will arrest
the demon of hunger that is now at
their doors.
If the protective doctrine were half
true, all that these laboring men would
have to do to secure high prices and
plenty of work would be to wait two
or three days.
At last it is being borne in upon the
popular mind, through hardship, that
neither a protective tariff, revenue
tariff, nor absolute free trade can
bring prosperity to the masses while
the natural resources of the country
are monopolized, while production and
prices are controlled by trusts, and the
railroads of the Union, the combina-
ton with those trusts, are empowered
to dictate who shall and who shall not
do business.
The grip of greed is On the country
greed that is only intelligent enough
to see where immediate profit lies and
remains blind to the necessity for the
general we'll being on which the we'll
being of capital itself in the long run
depends.
LABOR IS SUFFERING.
1t is labor that is suffering most now.
But nobody except the millionaires OF
the trusts and their hangers-on is sat
isfed with things as they are.
The new tariff will be tried and il
will fail. Then the revolt against the
paraly zing trusts, in whose interest
alone tariff has been devised, will be
hn
uine prosperity for either workingmen
or business men while the trusts own
the country and rule and rob it and
destroy one-half of the primary money
Of the people.
A measure conceived, as the Dingley
bill has been, in the counting rooms OF
the protected monopolists could not
fail to deceive the working classes and
the farmers and be condemned by the
Democratic party and all those who de
sire the welfare of the whole people.
The sole purpose of this legislation is
to secure the highest tribute to the
trusts and protected interests. AIDE
quate revenue is totally disregarded
and equality of burdens ignored.
The mask is thrown off now. We nc
longer hear the leaders of the Republi-
can party claiming that protection is
for the benefit of infant industries or
that the foreigner pays the tariff duty.
Protection pure and simple, without
reference to revenue, is the full scope
of this bill when it becomes law.
Mr.. Speaker, prosperity will come
speedily to those protected by this bill,
and distress and misery to those who
have to do the protecting,
AS the stocks and bonds of the pro
tected trusts and mills begin to rise
you will hear the subsidized press cry
ing out that prosperity has come. But
when labor and the farmers products
stand still, as they will, nothing will
be said by them.
SURRENDER TO TRUSTS.
The adoption of this bill will consul
mate the complete surrender of the