Ottumwa semi-weekly courier. [volume] (Ottumwa, Iowa) 1899-1903, 1903-10-01
REPUBLICAN COUNTY TICKET.

Coroner r. w. Mills.
supervisor John McElroy.
GOVERNOR cUMMiNs' ADDRESS.
The opening speech of the republi--
can campaign in this state, delivered
by Governor Cummins at Des Moines,
on Saturday night, and which has been
published in full in the Courier, is an
extended, but an intensely interesting
document. It will well repay careful
perusal by every voter, whatever may
be his political affiliations. Governor
Cummins' definition of the much dis
cussed shelter plank is one that will be
received with satisfaction by republi-
cans Governor Cummins states that
the present state platform, itself, ex-
plains just what the shelter plank
meant to him last year and the year be-
fore. The clause in the platform of
this year, to which the governor refers,
reads as follows:
Tariff rates enacted to carry this
policy into effect should be just, fair
and impartial, equally opposed to for
eign control and domestic monopoly"
The governors explanation and def
milton of the shelter clause will be sat
isfactory and, in our opinion, the time
has come for the much cussed and dis
4 cussed shelter clause to be regarded as
a closed incident.
Governor Cummins in this address,
allows no one to take a stronger stand
in the advocacy of the protective
principle. than does he. Governor
Cunmins is right when he says:
Tariff laws are the weapons with
which nations fight for commercial
supremacy. The government is under
as high obligation to prevent the cap
ttre of our markets by foreign goods
If thereby the general welfare will be
promoted, as it is to prevent the cap
ture of our flag by foreign army 1t
has the same duty to protect its peo-
pie against unlimited importations if
thereby we are enabled to produce for
ourselves, as it has to prevent the
general issue of bank notes in order
that the integrity of our currency may
be preserved. To say that we cannot
divert the natural channels of trade
to our advantage, is to impeach our in
telligence."
Much of the discussion within the
party, some of which has been not a
little acrimonious, would have been
entirely avoided if the following, as
now enunciated by Gov. Cummins had
dominated party councils and party
discussions during the past few years.
Gov. Cummins says
ct is impossible to write tariff
schedules into platform, and there
fore, all that party can do in it's
conventions, is to declare a general
principle to which it pledges itself in
the enactment OF law"
Gov. Cummins effectively clinches
the argument against free trade as adj
vocated by the democratic party in
Iowa in the following quotation from
a synopsis of the report of an examin-
alton made by the government of
Great Britain, looking to some changes
in it's tariff policy. The report says:
'The average level of wages in the
United States is one and one-half
times greater than in the United King
dom, while in Germany wages are two
thirds and in France three-fourths OF
the average prevailing in the United
Kingdom"
The American system under which
these wage conditions exist in the
United States is the system which the
democrats would wipe out by abolish
ing the protective tariff Gov Cum
minis well asks:
Suppose that the barriers erected
at every port We're swept away ant
that our markets We're inundated with
the manufactures of foreign lands
what would the millions who have
been working in protective industries
do for a living? Where would they
turn for employment? Who would pay
them high wages, low wages, or an.
wages?"
With reference to the farmer and
Z the value OF the republican policy Of
protection to him. Governor Cummins
handles the matter with equal strength
and properly reaches this conclusion:
That of all classes into which PEG
de are divided, no class has been more
benefited by protection than the far
mer."
With reference to the trusts, Gov
Cummins says truly that the desire
10 make money out Of the mere organi