Show IOn I DICTATING LEGISLATION On the folly and wrong of the attempt to compel legislation by assembling mobs at the seat of government Senator Sen-ator Hoar had this to say in a letter to Swift one of the ocalled generals at the head of a Coxey band The persons who belong to your company com-pany or to the company ofMr Coxey so far as they are decent and wellin tentioned American citizens are entitled to all the privileges of American citizenship citi-zenship But I cannot recognize their title to speak for the American people Five or ten thousand men have no right to dictate to the other 65000000 or to dictate to the government which the other 65000000 have established I hold a commission from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts as do my colleagues a ji1 Ao J n Jin the Senate and House of Representatives I Representa-tives and we have the sole title to express ex-press the will of the people of Massachusetts Massa-chusetts in national legislation until in f the exercise of their constitutional rights they select others to supply our places We can recognize no master I except the commonwealth itself Certainly I I Cer-tainly no body of men less than a majority ma-jority qf the entire people can call 1 upon us to act otherwise than in accord with our own judgments That is all very sound and sensible I But has Senator Hoar and his Republican Republi-can associates been legislating for 65 000000 of people or only for the classes who have reaped the pro ts of the protective i pro-tective tariff to which they have been adding for over thirty years Talk about tariff tinkering they have been tinkering with it over and over again They have changed it twentysix times increasing it in each instance in the aggregate ag-gregate This has been done at the instance of capitalists and manufacturers who have flocked to Washington and dictated dic-tated what duties should be imposed to protect them in their btisiness enterprises enter-prises If that is the proper thing to do and Senator Hoar has never been known to object to it but on the contrary con-trary has approved Qf it in public speeches how much different is it for these mobs of men to march to the capital for the same purpose Indeed the spectacle presented in this ountry today is the result of what his party has wrought The claim has been that protection was for the purpose of creating or maintaining high wages for the workman If the government has the right to legislate for that purpose has it not the right to carry out the principle and provide employment for j the working people at the proper rate of wages and the right hours of labor That the increased protection thus afforded to the manufacturers has not resulted in the increase of wages to the workmen but that the employers have pocketed what was claimed to be for the employed is evident from the condition con-dition of the country and the reduced rates paid by the increasingly protected industries The protected manufacturers hae been clamoring to Congress in person for many years and have had their way now why should not the unprotected unpro-tected workmen for whom it was falsely asserted the protective policy was maintained take the same course and gather at the capital to present their claims and make their demands Coxeyism as we have made plain before be-fore is the legitimate outgrowth of the heresy of protection I |