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Show S3 AY AND THE TARIFF, ; : ' ; Honorable Leslie M. ELaw, the present Secre-jtarpof Secre-jtarpof the-Treasury, is doubtless a first-class book-jLcepsr, book-jLcepsr, and may be a first-class financier; but, out-ieIe out-ieIe of his own mind and that of ; his family, we ' doubt if ever anyone has taken up the idea that he ' ;ka great statesman. In every frontier ktown there cisi be found at least one man who thinks he is a great horseman, but who has a reputation of having 'never mounted: a horse that he has not been run away with. Mr. Shaw has made . a great 'many speeches, but his reputation is that he never sets k his mouth in motion in a speech that it does not . ' runaway with his brains." . ' .'. He made a speech in Sioux Falls, on ; Monday last. His theme was the tariff, and, while the speech must have sounded pretty well, in more than . cne place he got his' facts mixed up, and his state-firvent state-firvent of principles he left open to criticism.- He car-' car-' r$es the idea that the entire Republican party is satisfied sat-isfied with, the present tariff, and that when a re- principle of government, and who was the passive associate of the capitalists of the great cities who cared for nothing except to increase their gains. - The people remember these things that Mr. Shaw does not. Agajn, he said, all Republicans stand pat We wonder what he would answer if he were asked what he means by that remark. Is -it that when a few in control outline1 a policy the rest all shallow it as they would a prescription from a physician if they were sifk? It is good when people stand for the right; it is horrible when a man who is in charge of a high office says in effect: "We will fix things pur. way a few of us and. the men of our party who are loyal to the party will do our will.?-,.' -;, ; , : -r - v-V ' - That is not American government. vThat is contrary con-trary to every principle of free government, and those interested in the welfare of the country and who believe that the1 Republican party as a whole is better capable of conducting, the government than their opponents, ought to pray every day that Mr. Shaw may have a padlock put upon his mouth, because be-cause he never opens it in public that he does not put his foot in it. - . . ;.viiJon is needed the Republican party will make the revision. ; He is mistaken in both particulars. There arfia great many Republicans -who know that the present tariff is shamefully unwise and unjust in tTerjxnany respects, and who believe that if the re- rJfiicJla is put off until after the next Presidential i ejection, it is quite probable that Republicans will t nobreTise it, but that it will be left as it was in 1893, ! f ar&ta -enemies to revise. i v 'Again, old Republican that he is, he does not jfieean to understand the idea behind the protective ?ta-4C For Instance, he says: "If it is to be a tariff rfor-rerenue only, then let tariff for revenue only be ; applied, and to the producers of citrus frjiits in '. j Florida, and to the producers of textiles and other artide)f apparel in New England,' and to the pro-ndaeerd pro-ndaeerd ofvheat in Dakota; but if it is to be protec- tiQiif theitJet it be protection to every industry in ' I wMcbpur-people are employed. Protection is not a loeal lasne and the application of protection must not be localized.'' If the shade of Horace Greeley 'fcrald return to earth, or the shade of Senator Mor-i Mor-i ill, and read that paragraph, they would exclaim f in chorus, "Why, that mouthy chap doesn't under-'Band under-'Band the first principle of the protective tariff." The tariff is justifiable only, in the first place, asa means' of raising revenue, and, second, in encouraging en-couraging the production of things needed against :the .competition of foreign countries while as yet thejrare not enough developed to meet such com-petitlon. com-petitlon. As yet our country is a land of magnificent magnifi-cent distances. The question of freight has to be considered, of freight and long hauls. . The q-uestion of wagegjs another to be considered. consid-ered. So, originally, considering the subject of iron, - 'or instance, the fact had to be remembered that tF&gea in this , country were double those in the United' Kingdom and the Continent; that whereas England,' for instance, or. Belgium, had their iron and coal mines close by their harbors, in order to compete with them an allowance had "to be made for the wages paid, for the freight on coal, coke and iron to the smelters and from the smelters to the seasnore; and so the tariff was put on.until it was possible to establish the plants and create the new -great industry. It was the same way with tinplate. It was the Bameway with woolen and cotton manufactured goodsrand the thought behind all was to create the greatest good for the greatest number; because if in our Eastern cities, for instance, a home-made article ar-ticle is worth in the market a trifle more than the imported article, still it is better for the country to buy the home-made article for the reason that theimoney to pay for it is kept here and enters into theTolume of money in our own conntry. But it is an old theme, and the average American citizen . "understands it better, apparently, than does- Secretary Secre-tary Shaw, But again he says, "Our people are very rest-: rest-: less under prosperity," and then proceeds to say, "We were never so, prosperous' before," and, "A friend said in my office the other day that we are sure of victory this year, and two years from now, if prosperity .continues; foresaid he, the American people have never gone back on prosperity. How short his memory! Our first great defeat was trace- ' able solely to the universal prosperity existing in the early nineties." That merely shows that Mr. Shaw is either a poor reader of history or has a shockingly treacherous treacher-ous memory. In the early nineties the men who collected col-lected interest'on United States bonds, and with the interest and principal collected were able to buy twice as much property as they could have bought when the bonds were given, were prosperous, v Having no other place to invest their means, they boomed certain cities like Buffalo, Minneapo- ; lis, Chicago, Omaha, Kansas City and others; but at that very time the lands of the farmers had, measured by gold, fallen fifty per cent in value, the crops that the farmers raised did not bring enough to pay the interest on their indebtedness, and, 'out-' 'out-' side of the very rich, the bondholders and the National Na-tional bankers, the people were exceedingly poor and the business of the country was at its lowest bb. , ' ' That is why Mr. Cleveland was elected. He -1 was elected on a platform promising to restore the half of the real money of the country that had been thrown away -thrown away in the interest of the interest gatherers. The people - tried a desperate remedy; they put the care of the country in the bands of a man who did. not understand one-broad |