Ottumwa semi-weekly courier. [volume] (Ottumwa, Iowa) 1899-1903, 1902-10-14

notifications of our tariff are inn
peratively demanded. and ifsI do not
the signs of the times
this belief is shared by the republican
OF forty-four other states. The whole
story is told when | say that we have
passed from the abstract into the
concrete. We have known that the
hour would strike, why should we be
startled when the ringing tones of
the bell of progress falls upon our
ears
Schedules Inspired by Patriotism.
We do not impeach the schedules
as they We're written-they were in
spired by patriotism and formulated
with intelligence; but if the hand of
God instead of the hand of Dingley had
penned them, the mighty transforms
tons Of five years would have untitled
them, or some of them, for conditions
as they now exist.
There has never been, and cannot
now be, a controversy with respect to
the purpose and measure of protective
duties. Their purpose is to give the
American producer fair chance to
take the American market at a fair
American price, so that the American
laborer can work at American wages,
and American capital can be rewarded
with an American profit, and thus or
iginate and develop those American
industries and enterprises that nature
has fitted us to carry on. Their meas
ure obviously is the sum that will ac-
complish this purpose. To make them
less will defeat the purpose and to
me than oil n
as inconsistent with the doctrine of
protection as it is hostile to the com
mon welfare.
Says Duties Are Too High.
Tested by these criterions, both as
to purpose and measure, no intelligent
observer can doubt that upon some OF
the most important products of the
United States the duties are too high
and it is the mission of the republican
party to reduce them SO that they will
again be in harmony with the prin
ciple out of which they spring. In do
ing this the party simply pursues the
even tenor of its way, condemning with
equal emphasis the proposal on the
one hand to make tariff duties an in
strument of unlawful profit, and upon
the other to make them the instrument
for the mere collection of revenue
There have been times unquestionably
when duties, however high, We're pow
erless to inflict injury upon the people,
/ for under the generous stimulant Of
protection. our development has beer
so rapid and so general that competi.
! ton, abundant and effective, has kept
| American prices at a fair level. But
| those days have passed, possibly for
ever and l speak but the sober truth
when / say that now, with a full
demand at home, the produce,
can, and does, use excessive du
| ties as weapon to enforce more thar
a reasonable price for the thing he
| produces. Protection will stand as
shield for honest labor and mine fo
lawful profit but it shall not be uset
as sword for industrial piracy or a!
a mint for illegal gain. Let no MAJ
| reproach the republican party for no
/ sooner turning it's attention to modifi
cations of the tariff. The change.
have become necessary through com
. mercial revolutions which have ariser
with rapidity so astonishing tina
the most deliberate reflection and in
i vestigation has been required 1t is
of the highest Importance too, tina
!. whatever is done shall be done aftel