The commercial. (Union City, Tenn.) 190?-193?, 1919-02-21
An Old-Time Democrat.


along considering the bill Oh. R.
15O1S) making appropriations for
the Department of Agriculture for
the fiscal year ending June 30, 1920,
when Representative Dies, of Texas,
got the floor, and, according to the
Congressional Record, delivered this
speech, which is worth a wider cir
culation than the Record can give it:
Mr.. Chairman, when members talk
about loaning money to the farmers
of this country, and talk about Demo-
Gratis and Republicans, it makes an
honest nonpartisan man laugh. The
best thing you can do for the farmers
of this country is to let them alone
and quit spending their money and
taxing the eternal life out of them.
daughter and applause.)
l wish the farmers of this country
and Che taxpayers of our land might
have a return of the old democratic
and republican theory that Govern
ment is not created to support the
people, but that it is created to be
supported by the people.
The great mistake we are making,
my friends, here now is that we are
practicing hypocrisy upon the peo-
pie. We arc leading them to believe
that the Government can support
them and lift them by their boot
straps out of their financial difficult
ties when, as honorable men, we
should say to them that all that the,
Government can do is to protect
their life and their liberty and tax
them to support the Government.
l have been here ten years, and l
am going out now
A member. And voluntarily, too.
Mr.. Dies. Yes; and will tell you
what you have done, and hope you
will take it in good part. You have
taken the fairest and best Govern
ment ever known among men and
you are making it into the most
despicable socialism. You took the
American people OF time when they
believed they could support them
selves and their Government, and
you are teaching them hour by hour
and day by day to expect that their
Government shall support them. In
stead of telling our magnificent army,
when the boys are coming back from
France and are being dcmobilized, to
go back to their jobs and engage in
their former industries, you are
leading them to believe that the Gov
eminent shall take it upon itself as
a duty to support them.
My friends, you are tearing down
the greatest Government, the great
est democracy, the world has ever
seen, and you are building up in it's
stead the poorest fabric of socialism /
that history can record.
Is it your intention to help the
people? No. You will not help the !
people unless you tell them that the
Government has but one duty to the
citizen, and that is to protect his
life and property and give him an
equal and fair race in this world.
(Applause) And you are teaching
him that the duty of the Government
is to help him. My beloved country!
I do not know: VIC are losing the
greatest Republic the world has ever
seen. Talk about international
demccracies! 1t is being swamped
amidst nebulous phrases and unintel-
ligible jargon. Would to God the
President of the United States would
get on the Tennessee and como home
and preserve this Republic Zap
plause) rather than NEEDLE longer
with the politics of Europe. We are
casting the lot of the people of Amer
lea, the peace and destinies of our
country into what? Into the hotch-
potch of the quarrels and poverty
and woe and destruction of Europe.
You know, when this is all over,
my friends, 1 will be out home farm
ing, and you who are left here will
read Washington's Farewell Address
with more respect than you have
ever read II before. (Applause.)
There is not anything new to be
said. Human nature is Just the same
as it was when our fathers made this
Republic. The President of the
United States, representing what
has been the greatest Republic
the world has ever sscen, may
speak of justice and of the
League of Nations, and the end of
the sorrows of mankind; but the best
hope of this Republic and of this
people is upon our own shores, de-
Tending the Constitution of our faith
ers, protecting the liberties of the
people and independent self govern
ment, a representative democracy.
And l wish, o God of Nations, that
our President would come back home,
and that We might leave upon this
hemisphere great democracy, un-