The Birmingham age-herald., 1908-02-26
TARIFF SYSTEM
 ROBS THE PEOPLE Congressman Pou DenounceS
 Republican Policies RESPONSIBLE FOR WRONGS MT. Pou Makes a Radical Attack Upon the Administration, Which He Says
 Has Fostered Trusts and
 Bred MaIefactors.
RESPONSIBLE FOR WRONGS

Washington, February 25.-Deelaring that when the President in his special message to congress framed that indict- ment, the prisoner in the criminals dock was his own party" MT Pou, of North Carolina, in the House of Representa- tives today denounced the policies of the republicans which he said had built up gigantic trusts under protective tariff system to rob the people.
 No man, he said, would deny that the malefactors and wrongdoers the President described existed in this country, but the republican party was responsible flor their presence here in this boasted land of equality and freedom"
 He declared that under equal laws im- partially administered it was almost im- possible for millionaires to exist. The republican party" he said, ''has sur rounded the trusts and monopolies and wealthy malefactors with a wall which shuts out all competition and has delivered to them the American. people as their legitimate prey, and because these trusts, monopolies and wealthy malefactors have taken advantages of the opportunities off,
 
 dent cries out in righteous indignation and sounds the alarm of great national peril.''
 The President had denounced monopoly, but in the opinion of MT Pou the greatest of all monopolies, the most prolific parent of all criminal trusts was the present, unjust, uprighteous protective tariff sys- tenn As regards corruption, said MT. P0u. the nation Vvn1ld oh- solutely healthy "until the poison from it's life blood shall have been removed"
 MT Pou charged that the President had repeatedly spoken of things he had done and those he was seeking to do, but he said, he was ominously silent respecting our system of taxation which all just men know is responsible to some extent for the abominable conditions which now exist
 The mighty scourge," he declared, would never pass away so long as the wage earner was forced to buy the neces- saries of life from the all power of the trust It would pass away, however, he said, when and only when every man is accorded equal opportunity by and before the law, when the laws of supply and de- mand, untrammeled in their operation are permitted to fix the price of all prod ucts placed upon the market and when the many no longer are taxed to enrich the few. He did not pretend he said, that tariff revision would bring about the con summation, but he charged that it was nothing less than criminal to allow the trusts and monopolies to prey upon the American people, absolutely unprotected as they are from all competition both at home and abroad" The republicans, he declared, had admitted as much by their action in the House.
 MT. Pou, amid loud democratic ap- plause, attacked the republican claim that the railroad law was their law. After discussing the speech made some time ago by Townsend, of Michigan, that the rate law was conceived in patriotism, born of republican parentage,' he said, in con- clusion, that nevertheless the Hon, Ben jamin R. Tillman, of South Carolina, was the physician who presided at the birth of the infant when after many trials and tribulations, and many days of peril, it saw the light of the Senate chamber in the FiftyNinth Congress"