Republican news item. [volume] (Laport, Pa.) 1896-19??, 1906-11-29
NOT A FREE TRADER
THOMAS JEFFERSON WAS A sTANcH
PROTECTlONIST.

Patron Saint of That Party Is ABB
surd-Words of the Third President
on Tariff Question.
Just why the Democratic party of to-
day should celebrate so strenuously the
anniversary Of the birth Of Thomas
Jefferson Is hard to understand. Ger
tainly Jefferson was far from being a
Democrat, measured by the principles
and policies of the Democrats of to-
day 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 a member of the Democratic
party as it has been constituted dur
ing the last generation.
II the Democratic party during its ell
tire existence has stood for anything it
has stood. for free trade and for the
buying Of goods In the cheapest mar
ket 1t may be well at this time, when
we are reading of Democratic tributes
to Jefferson, to quote few words from
our third president to show how absurd
upon him as the patron saint Of that
party.
The first tariff law, passed in 17S9,
worked well In starting the new re-
public upon career of industrial SUI
premacy and afforded sufficient rev.
enue for the needs Of the government
By 1906 the surplus in the treasury
was SO considerable as 20 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 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
eign luxuries 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 wfthon.
them at the will of a foreign natien? He
therefore, who is now against domestic
manufactures must be for reducing us
either to a dependent upon that nation or
to be clothed In skins and live like beasts
In caves and dens. l am proud to Eay
/ 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 to difference of price, secure uA
against relapse into foreign dependency.
III 1909 Jefferson wrote to Humphrey
as follows:
My 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 society for the ell
couragement of domestic manufactures
Jefferson wrote:
The history of the last twenty years ha&
been a significant lesson for us all to de-
pend for necessaries on ourselves alone,
and / hope twenty years more will place
the American hemisphere under system
of its own. essentially. peaceabie and in
dustrious and not needing to extract its
comforts out of the eternal fires raging in
the old world
1t might be well to read some OF
these quotations from Thomas Jeffer-
son at the banquets so much enjoyed
by Jeffersonian Democrats.