| Show FELLED WITH HIS OWN CLUB As the cry is still kept up that the i reform of the tariff not yet effected has caused all the troubles of the times and in face of the facts it is still contended that the country was prosperous till the Democrats went into I in-to power it becomes necessary oc asionally to meet this folly face to face and beat back the falsehood with > > < r r f the weapons provided by its inventors The theory of the protectionists is that the country enjoyed unparalleled prosperity under high tariffs and they have the assurance to claim that the system of exorbitant taxation which it embodies was the cause of that pros perity And pursuing that theory they assert with equal impudence that the advent to power of the Democracy was the occasionof the financial panic I i and Its succeeding distresses because they occurred about that time j I That a country will grow rich by inordinate ordinate taxation is a peculiar hy I othesls but it is good enough for Republican I publican politics It is equal to the theory that a crop of noxious weeds In the national field instead of being j he result of previous sowing or bad j farming is the harvest of something that has not yet been planted which I Is the Republican way of foisting the fruits of their < evil trees upon their successors who had not made a move to till the ground or prume a limb Our obituary neighbor has several times referred approvingly to the boast of President Harrison just before I i be-fore he left office of the wonderful prosperity the country had increasingly I increasing-ly enjoyed up to that time under the blessings of protection And it has I laid the entire blame for recent hard I times on the Democratic party The fear of free trade it claimed was the cause When confronted with its own utterances to the contrary it then hedged around and admitted that the demonetization of silver was partly the cause and the rest was due to Democratic ascendency When the editor of the obituary organ i or-gan was in Washington last year he addressed a letter to President Cleve and which was published in his paper editorially Just by way of contrast to some of his recent utterances we will reproduce a paragraph or two from that letter They will do for the present pres-ent as a club to knock on the head his later diatribes against the Democracy This is the condition which he pictured of the land enjoying unparalleled prosperity under protection and also the theory for the sole and only cause of existing troubles and it is signed C C Goodwin The people the great working hosts of the land are very poor The great middle class they who have a little capital and by their capital and labor and by the work they are able to give to others poorer than themselves because be-cause of the harvests to ripen the Wheat to turn to gold and the cotton to snow They have made no money for ten years except in the one year when a famine across the sea gave the farmers farm-ers despite the methodS at home a profitable foreign market for food If they were in debt ten years ago they are more in debt now and they do not know which way to turn While the millions in the land have been swelling and doubling they have seen a steady decline in the value of their products and in the land which they till They think this is monstrous in a great free land like this They ascribe it to but one cause and the instincts of a great free people are never wrong You Mr President would be shocked shock-ed were a proposition to be seriously made to take one half the money of our country and cast it into the sea You would cry out Why tihs is pure lunacy l it would destroy half the values in the land and make the pay I ing i i of debts impossibe by taking from i the debtor the ability to pay Mr President that was precisely what was done by our lawmakers twenty ago and < hence the congestion since Now it is evident from that letter that the country had not been prospering prosper-ing under protection but that for twenty years it had been struggling against adversjtjv Also that for ten years even the mIDdle classes had been growing poorer J The trouKes of 1893 then were the culmination of previously previous-ly growing disasters And the ONE CAUSE according to the instincts a great free people who are a never wrong was not Democratic oscend ancy not the threat of free trade not danger to hjgh tariffs but only and solely the demonetization of silver by the Republican party in 1S73 Whenever the obituary maker gets away from his proper occupation and begins to pitch into the Democracy he should take up this club that he offered offer-ed to Cleveland and smite himself hip and thigh |
