70^ CS3 HH vftw f i M<<' 'si'" t jf 1^9 i^nran ^B f ^ ^ - r \v^ ^d< *< °^ >' <^9;, -, / . . s // '^^ ^ ' ^G ^ "^ / ^ '^ \G ^ '^ ' ' '^ \<^^ ^^d< -V ' 4 ^ -#^ -.^^ # . V%^ ^..0^ v^^/ V V "t>'S^ 0" r ^<^^ .^ ./ •^- *0. ^ ^ * <» s '^ ^ ^^ '-O ^ ^ ^ ^ s "^ \V * ^' : .^ ," A \ V O. ' ^ * i, s ^. ^ * ^ s ^ ^^' \<1^^ .\^iC/\^o -'^.^^^V '^' ^ %-. ^0^ ^ * , %<. ^ c^ :^ "' ^^'^ %\ "^ 6^ :^""^' " ■' "^c^ :^ ;^'"^'^ %^^ -^ .^' .^^^^ ^^ V ^ ^ '' A V A ,V ^o. 4^ C0\- V ., ^ " ,. V-^ ^ .-■'- '"^ 'Jo. _ •';;^>, V '^..c^C PRICE TWENTY-FIVE CENTS. HK CHICAGO HKKALD. EDITORIALS THAT WON: ARGUMENTS THAT LIVE PUBLISHED BY THE CHICAGO HERALD COMPANY, 156 WASHINGTON STREET. #' THE CHICAGO HERALD. EDITORIALS THAT WON; ARGUMENTS THAT LIVE. ^6> PUBLISHED BY V^JiV/A THE CHICAGO HERALD COMPANY, 1 56 Washington Street. ^•A V~ £'•705 Entered according' to Act of Congress, in the year 1893, by JAMES W. SGOTT, in the oflSce of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C. / ^3 ^ /^3 PUBLISHER'S NOTE. The great Presidential Campaign of 1892 was fought on the question, Is IT Constitutional or Moral to Tax One Freeman in the United States for the Benefit OF Another? The extraordinary answer given by the Western States was largely prepared by the following editorials in The Chicago Herald. They were written by Horatio W. Seymour, Managing Editor. CAMERON, AMBERC & CO. CHICAGO. TABLE OF CONTENTS. Page. Safe Conduct to the Rear, "^ Hereditary Wrong, . . . 10 Protectionism Exposed and Doomed, 14 A Domineering Oligarchy, 1^ A Question of Morals ^1 Plain Sp6ech, ^^ Pauperizing and Brutalizing Labor, 28 Protectionism's Hollow Insincerity, 32 Coining Money Out of Blood, 35 The Misuse of Statistics, 39 Enormous Waste of Protectionism, 43 What Protectionism Tried to Do, .47 Who Receives the Plunder ? ^1 Baselessness of the Wages Lie, 54 Monopoly-Ridden Agriculture, 58 an Polite Pauperism, "* One Campaign Badge, . 65 John Bull's Red Coat, ' • ^8 Taxation and Liberty, "^^ Protectionism's Stupendous Bribes, 74 Face to Face with its Promises, 77 Honest Wealth vs. Dishonest Wealth, .... 81 Historic Democracy and the Tariff, 85 Republicanism and Robbery, 88 Counting the Cost, ^1 The Man and the Hour, ^5 A Democrat in Earnest, . ^ .... 98 ^^. u SAFE CONDUCT TO THE REAR. Before the beginning of hostilities in time of war it is custom- ary for civilized people to give strangers not in sympathy with them safe conduct beyond the lines. The time is now at hand when the democratic party must grap- ple with the most gigantic wrong of the age. Its position as to the question of protective tariffs has been authoritatively pronounced by the national convention. The party, pledged no less by tra- dition and history and fundamental belief than by the platform adopted at Chicago in June, is for free trade. It is not for trade that is taxed a little in the interest of monopoly any more than it is for trade that staggers almost to destruction under taxes piled mountain high in the interest of a privileged class. It is for trade that is wholly and absolutely free from protective taxes large or small, for trade that is open to all on equal terms, and for trade that shall bear no tax burden at all save that which may be imposed for revenue. The existing tariff, the most monstrous abuse of the taxing power ever known to a free people, is not for revenue ; it is for plunder. The government's share of the imposition is incidental and comparatively insignificant. The chief aim of its authors was to reduce revenue and increase the profits of monopoly. Against this barbarous law which has robbed and degraded American labor and filled every honest man's heart with a lively sense of the wrong done to him and the danger that threatens to his country, the democratic party is arrayed honestly and fearlessly, with no misgivings and with no equivocations. A tariff for revenue only is free trade— the only sort of free trade that the world has ever known. A tariff for revenue only is a tariff that gives thieves, liars and confidence men, bilks, malin- gerers andtriflers, incompetents, drones and lazzaroni, bribe-givers, 7 8 SAFE CONDUCT TO THE REAR. fat fryers and bounty beggars absolutely nothing. If they do business they do business as other men do— as honest men do. If they make and ofier anything for sale they must depend on their own sagacity and on the character of their product to find a pur- chaser—as honest men do. If they are capable of earning a living they will live as honest men do— not by the sweat of other men's brows, but by their own exertions. If they are incapable of making a living without robbing their neighbor they will go hungry and naked— as many better men than they have done and will do until the end of time. A tariff for revenue only in this country to-day would be the most striking manifestation of na- tional obedience to the divine command, "Thou shalt not steal." It may be that there are men calling themselves democrats who cannot or will not subscribe to this high resolve. Perhaps some of them are dishonestly taking toll from their fellow men. Perhaps others are misguided and ignorant. It is possible that still others, knowing the truth, but mistakenly anxious for party success at any sacrifice, do not believe in risking all on a principle when in their estimation an expedient of some sort would answer every purpose. If so, the time has now come when all such should be given safe conduct to the rear. Democracy has been clearly enough defined. He who runs may read. It will take no step backward. The man who is not for free trade is against democracy. The man who quibbles, the man who mouths platitudes about incidental protection, is against democracy. The question has passed beyond the bounds of expediency. It is a political question in a sense, but not wholly so. In a wider view it is a moral question. Being a moral question, the right must prevail, and when the accumulated wrath of the people shall break upon the strongholds of robbery, little robbers as well as big rob- bers will be put to flight. Percentages will cut no figure then. The man who took 5 per cent, will go along with the man who took 50 per cent. The oppressors of a few and the oppressors of many will find themselves in the same dock, convicted of the same crime and sentenced to the same penalty. Thus clearly outlined, there should be no question from this time on as to the meaning and purpose of democracy. The party SAFE OONDUGT TO TEE REAR. 9 is about to move forward. Let him who would turn back, turn back. If there are so called leaders who doubt or hesitate, let them give place to braver and honester men. If there are cow- ards or knaves who long for the flesh pots of monopoly, let them have a safe conduct beyond the lines. In unity is strength. With- out unity, devotion, singleness of purpose and an unflinching determination to root out and destroy this tariff infamy, nothing can be accomplished. Let the so-called democratic tariff straddlers and dodgers in the west take notice, therefore. This is to be a movement for free trade. The democrat who by tongue or pen seeks to qualify or limit the purpose of the party to destroy protection root and branch and to expose and punish the thieves and liars who have profited by it at the expense of the people, will save himself and his party much needless trouble by passing over to the camp of the enemy now ! HEREDITARY WRONG. The tariff abomination in this country has been discussed on existing lines long enough. Discussion of a moral question is use- ful if the main point be not lost sight of, but there comes a time in every movement against incorrigible wrong and wrong doers when argument avails no longer. After a case against a habitual crimi- nal. has been made up, after all of the pleas and counter-pleas have been entered, after the jury, fully instructed, has solemnly weighed the testimony and agreed upon a verdict, which even the culprit knows is against him, judgment and execution are in order. The American people are fully informed as to this tariff crimioal. They know that he steals. They know that he lies. They know that he is desperate. They know that nothing is to be gained by appeals to his conscience or to his sense of justice. They know that he is a scoundrel who is at war with society and that his crimes will not cease until he shall have been exterminated. When the question of human slavery had been discussed in every conceivable phase for more than a generation it was found that that monstrous error was incurable. It could not be reformed. It could not be circumscribed. It could not be rendered harmless. It could not be modified. It could not be concealed. Convicted. in the high court of reason, it sought refuge in one lie after another until at last, with a savage last-ditch obstinacy, it threw off' all disguises and, appealiug to the sword, it perished by the sword. Slavery was a hereditary wrong. So is protection. The gener- ation that is now oppressing the American people under the cover of the tariff was reared to the privilege. The right to rob has been handed down from fathers who had shame-faced excuses for their system to misguided sons who never knew anything else and who believe that it is right for one man to tax other men. No sane person imagines that these hereditary beneficiaries of wrong-doing can be won over by argument or by appeals to reason and 10 HEREDITARY WRONG^ 11 conscience. They have been born to monopoly. They drank it in with their mother's milli. It was nourished in them by fatherly counsel, precept and admonition. They cannot be made to yield by persuasion or by threats. They will argue gladly until dooms- day, and, if they weary of the iteration of falsehood and folly, they have money wrung from the people with which to hire attorneys and newspapers to take up the strain where they leave off. While argument is prolonged the thieving continues. They do not fear abstractions. They do fear action. The slavery evil was argued exactly as the tariff evil has been argued. Its crafly defenders were ready in every political cam- paign with some new trick or falsehood on which the energies of the people were wasted. In the beginning slavery was an admitted wrong which could not be denounced because its beneficiaries wei e brother Americans and brother patriots. It was generally admitted that it would have to go — some time. Then it was a domestic institution which did not concern outsiders. Then it was a good thing for the north because it kept the south out of competition with it in manufacturing pursuits. Then it became a great thing for the negro because it took him from savagery and civilized and christianized him. Then it was found that it was a freeman's birthright ; next, that the integrity of the state depended upon it ; next, that its destruction would endanger business interests; next, that its opponents were anarchists ; next, that it was a divine institution, sanctioned by holy writ which was duly quoted ; next, that a slave-owner was as good as ten "yankees" and that as all past compromises were illegal, they should be wiped out and a man should not onl}- go where he pleased with his "niggers," but other men should hunt them down when they escaped and return them to him ; next, that freedom meant a bloody race war and the anni- hilation of the whites ; and lastly, that the mere agitation of the question was calculated to incite a servile insurrection and was therefore ample justification for war. During this period of discussion and entreaty there were com- promises and modifications of various sorts, but the evil remained and at the first opportunity the slaveocracy, made savage by oppo- sition and defying all restraint, repealed them, threw defiance in 12 HEREDITARY WRONG. the face of the north by passing the fugitive slave law and then prepared for another century of talk— and sla\»ery. But the mat- ter had passed beyond the range of argument and technicality and sophistry and falsehood. The great crime stood face to face with nineteenth century civilization and one or the other had to go. The tariff crime has gone through all these stages of defense and evasion. The tariff compromise of 1883 was a slight concession made at the suggestion of cautious men for the purpose of appeas- ing popular wrath, just as the Missouri compromise was agreed to for a similar purpose sixty years before. Yet— such was the futil- ity of argument — the first sweeping republican victory thereafter was followed by the enactment of the tariff's fugitive slave law which bears the name of McKinley. That law was monopoly's defiance, just as the fugitive slave law was slavery's defiance. It was intended to fortify a colossal wrong and at the outset no effort was made by its desperate and dogged authors to justify it. The falsehoods, the tricks and the "scares" that are now resorted to in its defense are chiefly the inventions of the fools and dupes who want an excuse for wrong-doing. The prime movers in the vil- lainy, intrenched behind bought laws, bought newspapers, cor- rupted officials, and a debauched electorate, are secure against everything but action on the part of the honest men of America. They do not fear discussion of percentages. They mock at morals. They can find more mare's nests than anybody else. They can get up more alarms. They can produce more lying figures. They can argue and steal indefinitely. But of one thing let every intelligent man be assured : iSo long as the American people are content to pursue this question on the lines laid down by monopoly itself, monopoly will be secure. Thanks to the courageous and honest utterance of the national democratic convention, the one mandate that these liars and thieves fear has gone forth. Protectionism has been tried, convicted and condemned. It is incorrigible. It has retreated into the last ditch. Like a tiger at bay, like slavery at bay, it cannot safely be reasoned with or exhorted. It will not, it cannot reform. It cannot be modified. It will not, it cannot restore to an afflicted people the millions that it has stolen or the lives that it has taken. It must HEBEDITABT WRONG. 13 be dispatched. There is neither safety nor wisdom in parleys or treaties. It deserves no consideration. It has sacrificed all claims to compassion. From now on there should be no question as to the fixed and unalterable purpose of the democratic party to destroy utterly this monstrous wrong. Protectionism has raised in this country the red flag of anarchy, the yellow flag of plague and the black flag of starvation. Let the democratic party, relying confidently upon the intelligence and the virtue of the people, inscribe "No Quarter" on its banners, and, pledged to the repeal of every law that taxes one man for the bene- fit of another, let it give protectionism clearly to understand that this is to be a fight to the death. PROTECTIONISM EXPOSED AND DOOMED. If an offender ever was exposed, all his craft uncovered, all his sneaking arts laid bare, all his contemptible lies revealed, and all his wretched evasions explained and accounted for, the monopoly tariff is that offender. The assumptions of protectionism are all false, all baseless, all dishonest, all impudent. It is because the American people are convinced of these things that the whole system has been sentenced to death. An institution that is sup. ported by lies cannot be praiseworthy. There was a time when, if the slave-owners of the south had been willing to admit that their system was wrong and that it was an affront to nineteenth century civilization, they might have procured a hundred years' lease of life for it by keeping its in- famies within bounds and sparing mankind the infliction of its intolerable encroachments. But such a thing came at last to be impossible. Led on by audacious men filled with the lust of power, hosts of the smaller slave-owners and multitudes who owned no slaves at all were hurried into a position from which nothing but a successful war could rescue them and their cause. Their war did not succeed and their cause perished. Time was when the protected interests in this country, with a few reasonable concessions to public opinion, might have so ordered matters that they could have retained their peculiar abuse for a generation longer. But the spirit of concession was not in them. The same infernal greed, the same devilish desire for polit- ical and commercial power that lured the slave-owners to ruin beckoned them also to destruction. The time came when the assumptions of the slave-owners were not compatible with American freedom and self-respect — when they became a menace to society at large — and from that moment compromises with slavery were impossible. The institution was doomed. So also the lime has come when the claims of the tariff monopolists are not 14 PROTECTIONISM EXPOSED AND DOOMED. 15 to be entertained by any man worthy the name of freeman, for they are at war with the fundamentals of American liberty and their further extension can be compassed only by the sacrifice of prin- ciples dear to every loyal heart. That institution is likewise doomed. In the first instance, the protective tariff, like slavery, was regarded as a necessary evil. The men who were to profit by it were quite willing to have it so considered. It was excused one hundred years ago on the plea that it was desirable to protect infant industries, though most of the industries thus protected were as lusty even then as any of like nature anywhere in the world. Not a word was then said about tariffs being necessary to protect labor. There never has been a time from the days of Plymouth Rock to the days of Lower Quarantine in New York Bay when labor was not much better paid iu this country than in Europe. It was true before an American tariff bill existed. It was true before independ- ence. It was true after independence, and one of the reasons why the men who were conducting infant industries in 1790 asked a little protection was the fact that they were compelled to pay higher wages than Europeans and should therefore have govern- ment assistance. If at that time any man had had the effrontery to say that he wanted a protective tariff because he desired to pay higher wages he would have been hooted out of congress for the fool and knave that his words would have shown him to be. Nothing was heard of the wages lie until twenty-five years later, and not much was heard of it until nearly a hundred years later. When the infant industry idea palled on the public mind— when the people began to weary of paying tribute to support the 40-year- old infants, whose parents even then essayed the roles of bosses and superior beings— it was suddenly discovered by the attorneys of the thieving propaganda that the tariff was the "American" system. The fine irony of this misnomer of a scheme as old as human oppression— as ancient as robbery in any form and of a sort particularly affected by pirates and monarchs reigning by divine right in semi-barbarous empires— was not at first apparent to the 16 PROTECTIONISM EXPOSED AND DOOMED. American whose exuberant patriotism was thus cleverly played upon. When the scales did fall from his eyes he was regaled with glowing accounts of the wonderful home market that protection created and maintained for him. In fact, the home market became the one great object of the tariff exactly as in former times that object had been the fostering of infant industries and the pro- motion of Americanism. As the home market fallacy began to vanish into thin air the wages lie, the most obstinate and unkill- able of all the lies that Beelzebub and his angels ever fathered, yet the most palpable lie, the lie most easily detected, the lie that had the most shadowy foundation that a lie ever had and the lie that has been choked down a thousand scoundrels' throats only to reappear in some new form— this wages lie was invented, and for a season the tariff that had once been called into existence to foster infant industries at 6 per cent ; that had promoted Americanism at 25 per cent ; that had safeguarded the home market at 40 per cent, began business as the tutelary god of labor at anywhere from 50 to 60 per cent. Later on, when even this inconceivably brutal and baseless lie was exposed and when McKinley had added his scorpions to the scourge with which monopoly was lashing American industry, it was proclaimed that protective tariffs not only made wages high in this country but that they made prices low, and a little later still, in order to cover a new point, it was authoritatively handed down that the tariff made the prices of manufactured goods low, but that it increased the prices of farm products. These are the differing claims of a criminal brought to bay at different times, every one of which is at war with some of the others. These are the cheap and shallow lies, contradictory and self- convicting in every case, with which the American people have been deluded from the beginning. These are the attenuated excuses under cover of which three generations of freemen have been systematically plundered. These are specimen bricks from the temple of sophistry and falsehood from which this odious doc- trine has gone forth, as from one speaking with authority, for more than one hundred years. Shameful, is it not, that preoccupation;. PROTECTIONISM EXPOSED AND DOOMED. 17 ignorance, self-deceit and greed, ever with an eye on the main chance, should have led an enlightened people on and on through this maze of deception until now the barriers erected about it seem almost insurmountable ? Yet, thanks to the avarice of the privileged class itself, thanks to the undisguised ravening of the pampered horde in and about the McKinley congress, thanks to the easy assurance of the knaves who fatten on the substance of the people, thanks to the con- fessions of a thousand villains who in their eager quest for wealth have publicly displayed their own blackheartedness and thanks to the contradictions and stultifications of ten thousand liars, the great infamy is at last exposed. The eyes of Americans are on these wretches. It is now seen that the evil to be dealt with is of no ordinary scope. It is seen that a system which corrupts congresses and courts, debauches voters, bribes newspapers, advocates force bills, bestows the people's money lavishly in largesses which bewilder and intoxicate the ignorant and vicious, is altogether wrong and in every respect dangerous. It is seen that the time when it might have been reformed has gone by. It is known that it is incurable. Too savage to be compromised with, too desperate to be reached by friendly entreaty, too thoroughly indurated to crime to be amenable to anything but heroic treatment, it must be destroyed root and branch. The protective tariff makes war upon every honest industry and every principle of republican government. The people must make war upon it if they would preserve and rehabilitate this republic. Privilege and democracy cannot exist side by side. If this is a democracy the doctrine that a small class of men may prey upon a larger class of men has no place here. In the utter destruction of that theory, which must speedily be brought about, none but the guilty will suffer. A DOMINEERING OLIGARCHY. The protective tariff is to be utterly destroyed because, like slavery, it has established in this republic a domineering oligarchy, which, assuming sovereignty in some things, encroaches at all points upon prerogatives that belong to the government alone. Things came to such a pass in the days of slavery that no legis- lation on any subject could be entered upon unless the slave oligarchy were taken into account. It had established here a power that was co-equal in some respects with that of the govern- ment itself. So now the tariff oligarchy rules this country, and born Americans who go to Washington and with uplifted hand swear solemnly to support the republic and its laws hasten to make their peace with this despotic power and straightway enter into its service and forget their oaths. The tariff oligarchy rules this land. At its order taxes, prices, industries, politicians, rise or fall. At its command public expend- itures increase or decrease. It fills the treasury or it empties it. Its interests determine every policy adopted. Not a bill of any importance ever reaches the president of the United States for sig- nature that has not at some stage received the approval of this odious power. Pensions, public improvements, bounties, subsidies, silver legislation— all of the things with which congress concerns itself— represent no longer the ascertained will or the undoubted interests of the people. They indicate and measure the bargains and bribes that Tariff has been able to effectuate. This tariff oligarchy, like the slave oligarchy, is a compact power based upon consuming greed and depending upon the ignor- ance, the preoccupation or the delusion of the people for its success. Like the slave oligarchy also, it lends itself most naturally to the support of vicious causes, for, as the history of all criminals shows, an alliance between companions in crime, either one of whom can convict the other, is likely to be closer than any other relation 18 A DOMINEERING OLIGARCHY. 19 known among men. The man having a wicked scheme to promote reckons no more with the people, but with Tariff. If Tariff finds in it an opportunity to attach a congressional district or a state to its following Tariff assents, and the bill becomes a law. If there is nothing in a measure for Tariff, it dies, because, no matter how meritorious it may be. Tariff rules this land ! Its voice is the voice of authority to-day ! So slavery ruled the republic at one time. After the southern oligarchy took up its position in the democratic party no man who did not approve of slavery could receive the democratic nomi- nation for president. So, now that Tariff has taken up its position in the republican part}-, no man can receive the republican nom- ination for president who does not first of all subscribe to every degrading dogma of TariiT. Tariff reigns. The people rule no longer. TariflTs interests alone are consulted. The people's inter- ests, if noticed at all, are at first reviled and finally ignored. We are threatened with national bankruptcy on account of the most corrupt pension system known to mankind since the rottenest days of Rome. Why ? Because Tariff is glad to debauch the peo- ple whom it is impoverishing. We are almost on the brink of the cheap silver money precipice, at the bottom of which lie national dishonor and individual ruin. Why ? Because Tariff is hastening to the support of a misguided faction which pays the price by sup- porting Tariff. We are menaced by a force bill which will make our elections a farce and perpetuate the rule of a single party. Why ? Because Tariff has grown weary of buying elections. We have our Dudleys. Dorseys and Quays with their blocks of five, our Wanamakers with their big corruption funds and their purchased seats in the cabinet, our MeKinley law, bought in advance by the men who hare grown rich under it, our partisan judges like Woods, who gain promotion b}' protecting political knavery, our muzzled republican newspapers and our gagged republican leaders. Why ? Because Tariff rules — because the people are subject to a power that governs in their name but not in their interest. This taritT oligarchy, like the slave oligarchy, is not formidable by reason of the numbers that compose it. It is made up of com paratively few men. It is powerful because of the numbers that 20 A DOMINEERING OLIQARCIIY. it deludes, the numbers that it silences and the numbers that it involves with itself in crime, A hundred men plunged the south into the bloody rebellion war. The mass of the people were for the union until the very eve of hostilities. Thousands of small slave-owners and thousands of others who owned no slaves at all were opposed to disunion. War itself was the only thing that made the slave oligarchy's last stupendous crime possible. It was the slave oligarchy that fired upon Sumter. It knew what was needed to precipitate matters and it did not hesitate to pull the trigger. So now with the tariff oligarchy. A hundred lawless men are the chief beneficiaries of the wrongs which, by playing upon the greed and the prejudices of some portions of the people, it has fastened upon all of the people. Thousands who imagined that they were benefited by slavery were oppressed by it, as they have since confessed. Thousands who have been taught that they could not do business without Tariff are fettered and robbed by it. The petty stealings tliat come to their tills, and which they see, are as nothing in comparison with the steady drain upon their resources for the benefit of the prime movers in the iniquity which they do not see. If slavery could have been abolished without war the process would have injured few men. It would have destroyed a coterie of lordly aristocrats, but the mass of slave-owners them- selves, under new and better conditions, would have profited by the change. So also the abolition of Tariff would injure no man save those who have assumed airs of political, social and commercial superiority that should not be tolerated in a country whose boast is the equality of its people. Tariff stands, as slavery stood, ever with a bribe in one hand to entice weak men to its side. Tariff stands, as slavery stood, ever with a bludgeon in the other hand to intimidate cowardly men into its service. It is not a thing that the masses of the people are attached to. It is an oligarchy composed of a few swollen scound- rels who rule by bribery, by deception, by intimidation, by lies, by fraud. Destroy the institution under which they have gained this iniquitous power and they only will suffer, while all oihers, relieved of an incubus that has sapped the life and virtue of the nation, will bound forward to new conquests in commerce, industry and liberty. A QUESTION OF MORALS. The root of the taritf abomination is the taxation of one man for the benefit of another man. Equivocate and falsify as the ad- vocates of this robber propaganda ma}', that is the object that every rascal among them has in view. That is the vested right of which we hear so much. That is the business interest that is said to be threatened. Stealing is a vulgar enough crime. Does it become more respect- able when it is endorsed by an entire political party, when great newspapers and great names lend their moral support lo it, and when even preachers are content to remain speechless in its pres- ence ? There is no occasion for self-deception here. The protec- tive tariff stands as the most abhorrent work of a government of thieves, by thieves, for thieves. Sooner or later the conscience of the nation must revolt against it. This thieving tariff school has turned the world upside down with its clamorous lies. It has justified robbery and sought to fix the brand of infamy upon the victims thereof. It has glorified thieves and stigmatized the people who have dared to enter a pro- test. It has fallen down and worshiped riches, every dollar of which was plunder. It has set up its deities of copper, of iron, of steel, of wood, of tin, of glass, and of coal, and, denyingthetrue God, it has impiously commanded all Americans to bend the knee to them. In the service of robbery it has appropriated to its own use the vocabulary of virtue. On its lying tongue words have lost their meaning. It has made right wrong, it has sent truth into disgrace branded as falsehood, and Justice it has scourged out of her temple where shame sits in state. Here is a moral question worthy the attention of every honest man. Here is a moral question that must be settled and settled right at no distant day if this country is to remain a republic in anything but name. With all men equal ^efore the law, we are 21 22 A QUESTION OF MORALS. already divided iiitc two classes — the one that robs and the one that is robbed. Because this infamy has been successfully prac- ticed for a generation, is there a citizen infatuated enough to think it can last forever ? Do the intelligent and the moral men of Amer- ica, who for one reason or another have winked at this atrocity, imagine that it can end in anything but disaster? With such an example as Tariflf thus sets before the young, no. one need be surprised if the coming generation of Americans shall develop the most colossal scoundrelism that the world has ever known. Every lamp set for the feet of our youth by the fathers of the republic has been extinguished by this graceless crew. All the landmarks are down, all the guideposts removed. We are now teaching inequality instead of equality. We are showing how much better it is to be dishonest, unjust and rich than it is to be honest, just and poor. We are holding up our government as a thing to be robbed or a robber to be enlisted on our side when we set out on our forays against our fellow men. We no longer draw inspiration from the heroes who taught equal and exact justice and who bequeathed us a republic that was to be always the best hope of mankind. The constitution we have flouted, the golden rule we have forgotten, the decalogue we have relegated to the garret and the admonitions of our elders we have laughed at as we have turned lightly in pursuit of the golden bait held out by the perjured wretches who have made privilege and plunder their watchwords. What do we say to the youth about to enter upon the serious business of life ? Do we tell him that success is to be reached only by perseverance, frugality and industry ? Not at all. We point to a shorter cut. Go to congress and beg or buy a law that will enable you to tax your neighbor. Do we say to the aspiring boy that to succeed he must deserve success ? We do not. We point to the men who have grown powerful on privilege and we say to him : Get a bounty or a subsidy or an appropriation. Do we hold up scrupulous honesty and undeviating justice as the things most to be desired and most likely to lead to fortune ? Never. We say to the lads of our day: Seek out some unfair and unjust advantage by means of a wicked law and then get rich quickly. No matter A QUESTION OF MORALS. 28 if you do have to bribe and bully your way to success. Who cares ? You will have plenty of company, and if you are a smart thief you will find numerous dull but influential thieves who will assist you. Do we refer the young man who aspires to political honors to the lives and precepts of the stalwart heroes who made the republic known and honored around the world ? No. Our present system says to him as plainly as words can frame a thought : Never mind the old men ; they were antiquated and slow. Take off your hat to some selfish interest. Prove your ca- pacity to serve King Iron, King Coal, King Copper, King Glass and King Lumber ; accept their bribe, and then, with their cash in your pocket and a lie upon your lips, go before the people whom you are to delude and betray ! That is the lesson that America is teaching to-day, while our pulpits are silent and one-half of our newspapers are bribed or muzzled. Is this a course to be pursued indefinitely ? Is it a pol- icy which we are to champion and if possible to extend ? The pul- pit south was not more timid in the presence of Slavery than is the pulpit north in the atmosphere of Tariffl This later bondage is intellectual as well as physical and moral. It has darkened many minds which should have seen clearly. In all this countr}- there are not a dozen preachers who have uttered a word against a sin that has become national and whose eflfects are world-wide. Do these silenced moralists believe that their cowardice is unnoticed? Will they much longer have the hurdihood to search out and at- tack with tremendous oratorical flourish some little vice while this colossal infamy stalks up and down the land unscathed ? Honest men everywhere have an interest in this question which transcends any mere partyism. Triumphant wrong never has challenged the attention of mankind without awakening a spirit that proved unconquerable. This tariff wrong which makes evil its good and which proclaims iniquity as its highest and noblest aspiration, has deliberately invited destruction. Let the people whose intelligence and virtue it has underestimated come together regardless of past differences and, with invincible pur- pose, pursue it to the death. PLAIN SPEECH. True words are likely to be plain words, and plain words some- times shock honest men almost as much as they do thieves and villains. It is always easy to drift with the current, and it be- comes easier still as the waters near the precipice. The privileged classes in America are opposed to plain speech because they have everything to lose and nothing to gain by it. It would be highly gratifying to the protected interests if the American people would always take the trouble to speak of them as "our infant industries." They would like to have a certain governmental policy in which they are deeply interested called the "fostering of domestic manufactures." They would like to have the vulgar word " tax " removed from the dictionary and "free trade " they would serve in the same way if it would not agree to masquerade under the more polite guise of " tariff reform." When a family has enjoyed the privilege of taxing other men for a generation or two it becomes highly refined and sensitive. Any- thing that is harsh or earnest grates upon its sensibilities. Euphe- misms it will tolerate, but plain words are positively too rude for delicate ears. No privileged class ever yet mounted to luxury and ease with- out carrying with it more or less of the respect which success, even of the dubious sort, usually commands. The tariff lords of America are no exception to the rule. The ties of society, of good fellowship, of politics and of the church are strong, and plain speech that tends to disturb them is likely to be reprobated by men who themselves may have nothing to fear from it. There is an element also in every society that always stands in dread of change ; that is timid almost to the point of cowardice and that is forever expostulating with the sincere, restraining the courageous, rebuking the bold and entreating the determined to be cautious. 24 PLAIN SPEECH. 35 Every moral or political revolution of which we have any record has had first to deal with this repressive influence on the part of good men, to say nothing of the more brutal manifestations of dislike on the part of the vicious and the ignorant. The brickbats and the bludgeons of the mob are less disheartening to a man who has justice on his side than the indifference or the timidity of the pre- tended friend. The rabble that jeers to-day will cheer to-morrow, but the man who knows the truth and who will confidentially acknowledge it, but who hesitates about boldly proclaiming it, may be looked for on the side of error when the final and inevit- able separation shall take place. The movement against the great crime of protection has gone through all of these preliminary stages. It has encountered the idiot's laugh, the fool's jest, the knave's leer and the coward's stare. It has overcome the good man's doubt, the timid man's frown, the church's indifference and society's pretty consternation. It has prevailed against the trimmer's flight, the trickster's lie, the deserter's retreat and the scoundrel's cool defiance. No trifle can stop it now. These years of discussion and preparation have not been wasted. They have given time for the rearrangement of parties, for the realignment of forces. If from one side there have been drawn the men who yield easily to the blandishments of power and wealth there have come from the other a greater num- ber who respect truth and revere justice. The separation of the sheep from the goats has been a tedious but a necessary process. In the shock of opposing ideas that is to follow plain words only will have either fitness or eff'ect. We taught in the case of the slave-owners that the man who held another in bondage and appropriated his labor to his own use was a robber. Let us apply that lesson now to the thieves who by law appropriate as their own a portion of the labor of their fellow men. A law that enables one man to exact from another any coutribution of money or of toil for which no equivalent is given is a violation of that section of the constitution which forever prohibits domestic slavery. A farmer who gives forty bushels of wheat for a coat when thirty would buy the same garment in a free market is robbed of ten bushels, and the time that he spent in growing that ten bushels 26 PLAIN SPEECH. was passed in servitude. Wlien slavery was abolished there was neither moral nor legal distinction between the man who owned five slaves and the man who owned five hundred slaves. So now the man who commands the unrequited services of other men for one-fifth or one-tenth of their time is as plainly a robber as the Arab man stealers in Africa who command such services for all time. This is the crime of which protectionism stands accused. The question involved is not a complex one, though it has been made to appear so by the subterfuges of its beneficiaries. If a thief's hand is in your pocket, you know him to be a thief, and no amount of stuffed reports and lying statistics that he may produce tending to show that pious men always get their hands into other men's pockets will deceive you in the least. If a sneak seizes your watch and runs and when caught challenges you to give the num- ber of the timepiece or the maker's name, you do not consider him any the less a thief even though he may prove to the officer and the gaping crowd that you do not know the maker or ihe number of your watch. If a man who tells you plainly that he is a thief, and that he intends to make a living by theft, is apprehended with stolen goods in his possession, and then declares that he took the valuables with the idea of replacing them with something better or of bestowing them upon the poor, you know him to be not only a thief but a liar. If you are invited into a high mountain by an individual who points to the beauties of field and forest, to the waving grain and the nodding corn, to the glad sunlight and the health-giving springs, and who says: "Behold my handiwork," you rebuke him in wrath, for you know him to be the devil, the great father of all lies. The protective tariff is to be judged by its primary object, the object which nobody denied when it was first instituted. That ob- ject was and is the taxation of one man for the benefit of another man. We know that to be thievery. Let us call it thievery. This thievery is now defended by the impudent assertion that it is beneficial to all, by the declaration that it raises wages, by the claim that it rests only on the foreigner, by the contention that it makes things cheap, and finally by the infamous blasphemy that PLAIN SPEECH. 27 but for this unjust system we would have no prosperity and no happiness. We know all this to be a lie. Let us call it a lie. We shall lose some friends by plain speech, but we will gain many others. The supporters of this detestable wrong do not fear generalities. They will argue everj^ point but the main point. Their lies they will discuss, but their theft they will not discuss. Let us hold them to it. Plain speech is necessary to batter down the walls of sophistry, falsehood and euphemy that have been thrown around this great central crime. Expose that shameful in- justice to the world and it will go as slavery did, followed by the execrations of mankind. PAUPERIZING AND BRUTALIZING LABOR. This degrading tariff system is destroying the self-reliance of the American people as surely as it is corrupting our youth and polluting our politics. If there is pauper labor anywhere on earth it is to be found here in the United States, where it has been pauperized by the debasing practices of protection. We not only receive hundreds of thousands of pauper immigrants each year, but we maintain an institution here which teaches these new-comers immediately on their arrival that they are to receive high wages because the govern- ment taxes other workingmen, most of them born here, for their support. The helpless children of oppression at home, they gladly accept this condition of pauperism here, and if the thief who stands between them and the government fulfilled his part of the contract there would be no complaint from the people thus pauper- ized. It is not until they discover that the thief does not bestow upon them in alms the plunder that he takes from American citizens that they revolt. In the self-respecting days of American labor how many work- ingmen could have been obtained for service in a shop or mill that announced its incapacity to pay the ruling rate of wages unless it were given the right to assess the people at large for the purpose ? What proud-spirited American mechanic would have taken the dirty dollars that any lying thief of this description might have offered him? Let the answer be read in the protected labor camps of this country to-day, where "American laborers" are known not by name but by number and where a man with a pronounceable name or an English tongue is so rare an object as to occasion remark. In the offscourings of the worn-out despotisms of the old world the tariff lords of America found exactly the material that they wanted to make pauper labor of and to fashion into voters who 38 PAUPERIZING AND BRUTALIZING LABOR. 29 would assist them in fastening their detestable system upon better men. Accustomed to caste and privilege and snobbery and in- justice at home and unacquainted with the independence that once characterized American workingmen, these wretches fell easily into the trap set for them, and, voting protection ballots that they could not read, they became instruments in the hands of villains to extend the accursed oppression of medieval Europe over a people that had once been virtuous enough to throw it off. American labor has been driven in despair from the shops and mines to the farms, where it is defiantly taxed ostensibly to enable our Carnegies to pay big wages to the Bulgarians and Scythians in their employ, but really to swell Carnegie's bank account and en- able him to astonish two hemispheres with the prodigality of his expenditure. That is where the true American labor is and that is what it is doing. The more highly protected the industry the fewer Americans will be found in it. The man who prates loudest of American labor has the closest relations with the swarming thousands at quarantine. The interest that professes the gravest apprehension of a "flood of pauper-made goods" is most likely to preside over a starvation camp where no English is spoken, where human beings live like savages and where no American idea save that of taxing one man for the benefit of another man ever takes root. This "protected" labor is the true pauper labor of the worM and it is positively the only pauper labor to be found anywhere on earth outside of the almshouse. Until they have been here long enough to discover the truth these pauperized importations regard each new tax levy by the tariff" barons in the same light that the inmates of a workhouse view an increased appropriation by the county board. They do not get the plunder but they think they do, and the moral effect is ex- actly the same. To the extent that protectionism succeeds in con- vincing the people that tariffs make wages high it is teaching some workingmen that it is right for them to filch money from the pockets of other workingmen. The moral effect of the wages lie is none the less bad because it is a lie. The man who thinks he is stealing, or who imagines that he is living upon money unjustly taken from another, is morally on a level with the man who does 30 PAUPERIZING AND BRUTALIZING LABOR. steal or the man who does live upon plunder that may have been bestowed upon him. The tariff abomination teaches the most ignorant, the most immoral, and the most completely foreignized section of the American people — the ones most sorely in need of instruction in the fundamentals of American civilization — that industry and thrift are not of prime importance, but that government assistance is absolutely necessary to their prosperity. Having unsettled labor with these shameful precepts and lying promises, protectionism withholds the expected plunder and shows in its own ostentatious wealth and lavish display what privilege does for men. Goaded to exasperation, the workingman sometimes strikes and riots, and perhaps in defeat he is starved and driven from home a vagabond, but he goes forth — a dupe no more — sullenly to join the great army which, oflQcered and led by exiles from moaarchial Europe, nurses here the hatred of wealth and authority that was engen- dered there. This is a matter which the native-born Americans who have sought refuge on the farms from this foreign invasion will have to consider some time. Why not now ? It is a question which may yet be settled, and settled right. Delays are dangerous. Time presses. The annihilation of the tariff iniquity is the first duty of freemen. It is feeding fat on the substance and the estates of men who never knew a master. A republic in which all men are equal cannot with safety to itself habituate millions in this way to semi-dependence. A republic cannot accustom a great class to the idea that it is right to prey upon another class. A republic cannot with impunity permit one class of men to delude and exasperate another class of men. A republic is for all, or it is a mockery. A republic which develops in the minds of a consider- able number of its citizens the idea that government is a thing to be plundered, or a plunderer itself ever ready to bestow upon them with one hand property taken from other men with the other hand, is producing at both extremities of the social scale the very elements which have destroyed more than one civilization and which on more than one occasion have menaced our own. PAUPERIZING AND BRUTALIZING LABOR. 31 "When the embattled farmers stood at Concord and fired the shot that was heard round the world it was held to be a crime to tax one man for the benefit of another man. It is a crime to-day. All of the collateral tariff infamies hang upon this one offense. Put an end to that and kindred evils and dangers will fall away of their own weight, depriving no honest ipan of anything that belongs to him and bringing disaster only to scoundrels who de- serve neither compassion nor defense. PROTECTIONISM'S HOLLOW INSINCERITY. The American tariff crime is maintained by its beneficiaries with an insincerity so impudent that the wrong done to the people becomes doubly scandalous by reason of it. There is absolutely nothing behind the tariff bulwarks that sometimes appear so for- midable but the consciousness of guilt. Every campaign that the tariff robbers enter upon they expect to be the last. They have many dupes, but that they do not deceive themselves is proved by the facility with which they dart from one clumsy falsehood to another and by the fact that they depend for success more upon vulgar scares and tricks than upon logical and straightforward argument. Like commoner thieves, they have no principle but theft. Like the cheap pickpockets and confidence men known to the police magistrates, they are always on the defens- ive and base their hopes of escape on the inspiration that the hour or the occasion may give to nimble wits. This explains why protectionism has no literature. Ci ime never did have a literature. Its votaries rise, flourish and fall, leaving no records save those that appear in pages that recount the tri- umphs of their foes. The motive of theft and injustice is the same wherever they may be found, and with that motive all learning, all art, all morality, all justice, is forever and everywhere at war. Like other criminal propagandas, protectionism is unknown in the libraries. It is a stranger to the schools. It is repulsive to youth. It is abhorrent to intelligence and virtue. Frowned upon by all these and indorsed only by greed, the efforts in recent years of a few misguided advocates of tariff theft to force their way into libraries with meretricious campaign documents and into classrooms with paid instructors in the art of robbery and oppression can have no lasting result, for the invincible powers of truth are against