Republican news item. [volume] (Laport, Pa.) 1896-19??, 1905-07-27
NOT A FREE TRADER
THOMAS JEFFERSON WAS A STANCH
PROTEC ZIONIST.

Uer,ocratic Claim Upon Him the
IntrOn Saint of That Party Is Abb
nlrd--VVor(ls of the Third President
on Tariff Question.
Just why the Democratic party of to-
day should celebrate 50 strenuously the
anniversary of the birth of Thomas
Jefferson is hard to understand. Ger
taiu!y Jefferson was far from being
Democrat, measured by the principles
aud policies of the Democrats of to-
cay. He never himself used the word
democrat" but Invariably called him,
self and his followers Republicans
and it can hardly be questioned that if
jefferson We're living today he would
not be member of the Democratic
party as it has been constituted dur
ing the last generation.
Ii the Democratic party during its en-
tire existence has stood for anything it
has stood for free trade and for the
b1ying of goods in the cheapest mar
ket 1t may be we'll at this time, when
we are reading of Democratic tributes
to Jefferson. to quote few words from
our third president to show how absurd
must always be any Democratic claim
upon him as the patron saint Of that
party.
The first tariff law, passed in 11S9,
worked well il starting the new re-
public upon a career of industrial SUI
premacy and afforded sufficient rev.
euue for the needs of the government
BY 1906 the surplus i'll the treasury
was so considerable as to make it a
difficult problem as to how it should
be DISPOSED of Referring to this mat
ter, Thomas Jefferson said:
Shall we suppress the imposts duties
and give that advantage to foreign over
our domestic manufactures? On a few
articles of more general and necessary use
the suppression in due season will doubt
less be right, but the great mass of the
articles on which imposts are laid are for
cign luNuries purchased by those only who
are rich enough to afford themselves the
use of them. .
The general inquiry now is. Shall we
make our own comforts or go without
them at the will of a foreign nation? He
therefore, who Is now against domestic
manufactures must be for reducing us
either to a dependent upon that nation or
in caves and dens. [ am proud to say
l am not one of these. Experience has
taught me that manufactures are now as
necessary to our independence as to our
comforts.
The prohibiting duties we lay on all
articles of foreign manufactures, which
prudence requires us to establish at home,
with the patriotic determination of every
good citizen TO use no foreign article which
can be made within ourselves without re-
gard 10 difference of price, secure us
against a relapse into foreign dependency.
IN 1863 Jefferson wrote to Humphrey
as follows:
Ny own idea is that we should encourage
home manufactures to the extent of our
own consumption of everything of which
we raise the raw materials.
In 1917, upon accepting an election
to membership in a society for the en-
couragement of domestic manufactures
Jefferson wrote:
TIE history of the last twenty years has
been a significant lesson for us all to de-
pend for neCessaries on ourselves alone,
and | hope twenty years more viii place
the American hemisphere under system
OF its own. essentially peaceable and in
dustrious and not needing to extract it's
comforts out of the eternal fires raging in
the old world.
1t might be we'll TO read some OF
these quotations from Thomas Jeffer-
son at the banqucts so much enjoyed
by Je!Iersonian Democrats.