386.4 
 
 H24S Ccirter H.HARRISON 
 
 SPEECHES ON ILLINOIS AND 
 MICHIGAN CANAL AND OTHER 
 SUBJECTS
 
 \\V-V
 
 SPEECHES 
 
 ON 
 
 Illinois and Michigan Canal, 
 
 AND OTHER SUBJECTS. 
 
 BY 
 
 HON. CARTER H. HARRISON.
 
 .^ & / g "XII. 
 
 SPEECH OP 
 
 HON. CARTER H. HARRISON, 
 
 OF ILLINOIS, 
 
 ON THE ILLINOIS AND MICHIGAN CANAL, 
 
 IN THE HOUSE OF EEPKESENTATIVES, 
 
 TUESDAY, MAY 2i, 1878. 
 
 The House being in Committee of the Whole and having under consideration the bill (H. R. 
 No. 4867) making appropriations for the support of the Army for the fiscal year ending June 30, 
 1879, and for other purposes- 
 
 Mr. CHAIRMAN : In old Egypt kings were worshiped as gods ; in imperial Home 
 emperors- were deified; during the Middle Ages kings ruled by "divine right," andin mod- 
 ern Europe by the "grace of God ; " in America rulers govern by the will of the people. 
 
 Sir, in all monarchical countries armies are maintained to defend the people against 
 a foreign foe and to defend the king against his domestic foe, the people. In our free 
 Republic armies are, and should be, enrolled only to protect us against our foreign enemies. 
 
 The gentleman from Ohio [Mr. GARFIELD] this evening most dramatically recited 
 Macaulay's brilliant picture of what in this country will be the result of a redundant 
 population, and his attempt to demonstrate that Mr. Jefferson's fabric of a free Republic 
 would be a failure. So dramatic was the gentleman's rendition of the Englishman's pict- 
 ure, that it was difficult to believe that he differed much from the essayist. It is true he 
 told us he did not think the prophecy would be fulfilled for yet one or two hundred years. 
 But with abundant precaution, he advocated the maintenance of a large standing army 
 with an elasticity of organization, ready for this emergency yet in the womb of future 
 centuries. He wants the Army kept us as a nucleus, around which is to be nurtured an 
 American martial spirit. 
 
 Ah I Mr. Chairman, standing armies do not encourage martial spirit among a people. 
 The people forget how to fight when they have hired soldiers to do their battles. Rome 
 v. ceased to be warlike, when her pretorian bands stood guard over her, and she finally bent 
 her knee to them as masters. The Mamelukes protected Egypt, and her people became 
 slaves. Turkey was protected by the Janizaries till the Turk became little better than the 
 eunuch of his harem. 
 
 The Swiss protected the Bourbon's France, and Frenchmen became caperers and revel- 
 ers, till finally awakened from their dream they were baptized in blood, and turned to men 
 and heroes. Martial spirit grows under the sunshine of liberty and love of country or of 
 conquest. It perishes in the baleful shadow of a standing army. 
 
 Sir, we want no standing army in free America to protect society against lawlessness. 
 The people must protect themselves and will protect themselves. The gentleman may go 
 to his couch and dream rosy dreams. His hundred or two hundred years off are yet far 
 . away. 
 
 The gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. BUTLER] told us this evening that for long 
 
 years only one law had been passed for the benefit of the poor man, and that it (the home- 
 
 stead law) was a delusion. Sir, that gentleman struck the key-note. "What we want is 
 
 ; proper legislation. We want laws for the benefit of the people, and not to enable the rich 
 
 to grow richer at the expense of the poor. 
 
 Taxes come out of the people, taxes are levied upon men. Federal taxes are paid by 
 what men eat and drink and wear, and not a dollar of it falls upon wealth. Change your 
 legislation and you may almost disband your Army. The people are hungry ; they are 
 k starving ; they are discontented ; they clamor for work. Give it to them ; set them to work 
 and make them happy and contented. This Congress can do it. Start some great public 
 works. Pass House bill 4822 for a ship-canal from Lake Michigan to the Mississippi, and I 
 will guarantee that the people will take it as an earnest of your good intentions. To that 
 I will now address my remarks. 
 
 Mr. Chairman, a century ago this year, Illinois was organized as a far-off county of 
 Virginia. In 1804 it was created a Territory, and in 1818 was admitted into the sisterhood 
 of States. Ten years later, or fifty years ago, its population was about one hundred and 
 
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 forty thousand, and its northern half, which now teems with a vast and intelligent people, 
 was the home of but few white men. In the northeastern corner of the State, on the south- 
 western bend of Lake Michigan, at that date was located Fort Dearborn, a small frontier 
 post, guarded by a company of United States soldiers. 
 
 Sir, outside the fort were the cabins of a half dozen white men (intermarried with 
 squaws), who eked out a scanty subsistence by doing odd jobs for the people in the fort, and 
 by trading with the Indians who came at stated periods to receive blankets, the gift of the 
 Great Father at Washington, and to trade furs with the resident agents of the American 
 Fur Company for the red man's treasures whisky and powder. 
 
 The fort and these cabins covered nearly all the dry land which lay within several 
 miles. To the east was the great lake, three hundred miles long, sixty miles wide, and nine 
 hundred feet deep. Its fountain waters were plowed once or twice a year only, by a small 
 schooner, which supplied the fort and the fur agency. In all other directions, for hundreds 
 of miles, stretched a wild prairie, low, flat, uninviting, and uninhabited, except by a few 
 scattered tribes of Indians. 
 
 Along the lake shore, sir, was a narrow, sandy ridge, a sort of natural causeway, only 
 a few feet higher than the lake. Excepting this ridge, nearly all the land for many miles 
 was a reedy marsh or a low prairie, so flat as to hold the spring rains in its tangled grass 
 as in a sponge. A person on horseback, leaving this ridge, found himself, during the spring 
 months, up to the saddle-skirts in marsh, or floundering along the flat prairie, which at 
 that period of the year was but little better than marsh. And even as late as July, a 
 pedestrian could reach the Des Plaines River, ten miles west, only by wading over shoe-top 
 in water, or by springing from ant-hill to ant-hill, the only dry land near. 
 
 Sir, the eye of a prophet alone could have seen here the site of one of the world's 
 great cities. 
 
 Immediately under the stockades of the fort lazily lay a small creek, or rather bayou, 
 reaching back from the lake shore a little over a half mile, where it was parted into two 
 branches, one coming from tho north, the other from the south, nearly parallel with the 
 lake, and neither over five miles long. That creek lay sullen and black like a serpent sleep- 
 ing in the marsh. Its average width did not exceed sixty feet, and at its mouth, where the 
 sands were driven in by the lake storms, it could in late summer be crossed almost dry-shod. 
 Its dark waters were rarely disturbed, except by the flappings of water fowls, whose nest- 
 ings were in the bullrushes along its low margin, or by the silent natation of the muskrat, 
 or by the almost equally silent dip of an occasional red man's paddle. 
 
 In more respects than in appearance did that inky bayou resemble a sleeping serpent. 
 Sir, it only required the prickings of man's warming energy to quicken it into a life, which 
 would send abroad a commerce far greater than that which floated on the Thames a half 
 century before. 
 
 That creek was the Chicago River ; to-day it is the harbor of a city of nearly a half 
 million of people clearing from its piers last year 10,284 vessels, of a tonnage of 3,311,083 
 tons. It is the feeder of the Illinois and Michigan Canal, the subject of my present 
 remarks. That little creek, which now flows up hill, has been for ages the fast-and-loose 
 link uniting two vast river systems flowing into far distant oceans. It is destined to exercise 
 an influence upon the world's commerce vastly greater than did Rome's tawny Tiber or 
 Egyptian Nilus. 
 
 Ages ago that link was fast united. Then it opened or closed as the waters were high 
 or low. Now, since a few shovelfuls of earth have been judiciously removed, it is again 
 permanently united, and Lake Michigan sends a part of her crystal drops to mingle with 
 those of the Father of Waters. Some of us here present will live to see mighty steamers 
 unloading cotton and sugar upon the piers of Chicago, arid, taking in the grain of the 
 prairies and minerals from the far-distant Superior regions, will steam away to the Crescent 
 City of the South. And the lakes and the Mississippi, and their peoples, will be united by 
 a bond no more to be disturbed by internecine strife. 
 
 Mr. Chairman, I said that fifty years ago only a prophet could have seen at Fort Dear- 
 born the site of a mighty city. But his mantle of prophecy need not have been Heaven- 
 born. It was only necessary that its woof and fabric should be woven of commercial and 
 engineering sagacity, united to a close observation of the little bayou and the low divide 
 separating its waters from those of the Des Plaines River close by. That divide was only 
 a few inches above the average surface of the Lake, and in high water the birchen canoe 
 passed freely from one to the other. 
 
 Agee ago the groat prairie States of the Northwest were a vast inland shallow sea. Its 
 deep pools were the beds of the present lakes. When the bottom of that sea was upheaved, 
 and the barriers to the east and south were broken down, the waters of Lake Michigan 
 flowed to a considerable extent, through a long cycle of centuries, through the Des Plaines 
 River to the Mississippi. As the prairies to the south were gradually lifted, and the out- 
 lets to the east were deepened, the southern outlet became nearly closed.
 
 Nature thus wrote on that low divide the first engineer's report in favor of a ship-canal 
 to unite the Mississippi and the lakes. She traced along that flat marsh, in the dark waters 
 of that little bayou, the plan for tying the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of Saint Lawrence. 
 A gentle breeze parted sister waters in that sullen creek and carried them to far distant 
 oceans, where one would be caught in the frozen grasp of the stream coming down from 
 Labrador, the other to be wooed by the warm embrace of the Gulf Stream, again to be 
 re-united in mid-ocean. 
 
 That report was read by our forefathers, and its recommendations were adopted by 
 American statesmen. Perry's victories on the lakes taught them where was to be the true 
 battle-ground in a war between England and America. 
 
 In 1814, President Madison, in his message to Congress, recommended a ship-canal 
 from the head of Lake Michigan to the Mississippi ; and the Committee on Military Affairs 
 of this House reported favorably the project. But Northern Illinois was then a far-off 
 land. Only two years before, Fort Dearborn had been the scene of the Wyoming of the 
 Northwest. The war was soon thereafter over, and republics are prone to forget in times 
 of peace the lessons of war. 
 
 England has not been so forgetful. Her Iron Duke told her, about the same time, that 
 " a naval superiority on the lakes was a sine qua non of success in a war with America." 
 By the treaty of 1817, the two governments bound themselves each to keep no mare than 
 one armed vessel of a hundred tons burden upon the lakes. But England soon took steps 
 to prevent that stipulation from being a source of weakness to her. She has at an expense 
 of about $22,000,000 thrown canals eight feet deep around the rapids of the Saint Lawrence, 
 and the Welland Canal from Lake Ontario to Lake Erie ten feet deep. This year the latter 
 is being deepened to twelve feet at a cost of about $10,000,000. And her intentions are to 
 deepen them all to the same depth. 
 
 Sir, when the Mason and Slidell imbroglio threatened to precipitate the two countries 
 into war, the London Times said that " the worst part of the struggle would not be on the 
 seaboard, but on the great lakes, and that within a week after the breaking of the ice, a 
 whole fleet of gunboats, with the most powerful screw-corvettes, would carry the protection 
 of the British flag from Montreal to Chicago." The people of our lake cities had to acknowl- 
 edge that the assertion was not a mere idle boast. England has kept constantly on hand 
 war vessels which could pass through these canals. 
 
 Sir, early in the late war one of our brightest military men (Frank Blair) said on this 
 floor, that "a fleet of light draught heavily armed gun-boats could in a short month get 
 into the lakes, and shell every city from Chicago to Ogdensburgh." We had but one small- 
 arm vessel to cope with this threatened fleet, and there were no means of sending succor to 
 her. Our only hope was in being able to overrun Canada before the ice should give way. 
 
 Had war then broken out between England and America, it is not improbable that the 
 lurid flames which swept away so many millions at Chicago in 1871, might have had fore- 
 runners all along the lakes. 
 
 Washington told us that "to enjoy peace we should be prepared for war." Had we 
 followed his advice by opening a ship-canal from Lake Michigan to the Mississippi prior to 
 the late war, the humiliation of the Mason and Slidell diplomacy would have been spared 
 us, and hundreds of millions of dollars of treasure might have been saved in our military 
 preparations. 
 
 Some of our most earnest statesmen were so impressed with the necessity of the means 
 for passing gunboats between the lakes and the Mississippi, that a bill was introduced into 
 the Thirty-seventh Congress, to deepen the Illinois and Michigan Canal, and received long 
 and earnest consideration. But the divided nation was then struggling for its life ; the 
 grip of a determined giant was upon its throat. Its sinews of war were shriveled ; its 
 energies were taxed to the utmost to send men to the field ; it could not spare the money or 
 the muscle to dig canals. The project slept till in the winter of 1865, when the war was 
 virtually over, and then a modified bill passed this House. But that bill saddled upon tbe 
 State of Illinois the bulk of the cost of an undertaking which was wholly national in its 
 character. Mr. Chairman, the Arkansas farmer did not repair the roof of his house, because 
 when it rained he could not, and when it was dry it was unnecessary. Must we follow his 
 example or shall we profit by his folly ? 
 
 But, Mr. Chairman, permit me to go back. During several years after Mr. Madison's 
 recommendation of the ship-canal from Lake Michigan, the subject was agitated in Congress 
 and in the new State of Illinois. In 1822 and 1827 it was put upon its legs ; surveys were 
 made and land grants were given. It was generally discussed in and out of Congress as a 
 national undertaking. But unfortunately many of our rulers were deeply imbued with that 
 hue of strict-construction doctrine, which taught them that salt was necessary to make a 
 water national. They could spend millions to improve a salt water harbor, but were 
 unwilling to use a dollar to improve a river, though it watered many States. Some of them 
 went so far as to doubt the constitutionality of improving the harbors of the American
 
 ___ 4 
 
 Mediterranean our great lakes. The Illinois and Michigan Canal and the Illinois Kiver 
 lay wholly within the limits of a single State, and therefore they could not conceive it to 
 be national. Such men as Benton and Silas Wright, however, lifted up their voices in loud 
 declaration of its nationality. Some of the most eloquent utterances of the great Missourian 
 were pleadings in favor of its construction. 
 
 Sir, Tempora mutantur, et nos mulamur in Mis. The theories of constitutional con- 
 struction have greatly changed since those great men thundered upon the floors of this Cap- 
 itol. Could I by some magic touch bring them back here to-day, to say what they said, 
 when you and I were little boys, in favor of this great measure, I would have but little fear 
 of their success. What I lack of their power and ability, I shall try to supply by my earn- 
 estness. 
 
 But, sir, years ago they failed ; failed because their giant thoughts fell upon ears already 
 being filled by sectional bickerings. The result was, this great national work dwindled 
 into a State undertaking. The canal was commenced in 1836 and completed in 1848 ; com- 
 pleted, however, not to float mighty steamers and bristling gunboats, but to tow along the 
 pigmy barge. Even this, however, gave a wonderful impetus to the Northwest, Northern 
 Illinois took at once a giant stride ; a stride prophetic of her future destiny. With true 
 instinct of future greatness, she has never lost sight of her duty, and has already completed 
 two locks upon the Illinois River, three hundred and fifty feet long and seven feet deep. 
 She has never lost sight of the fact that that river and the canal are but an arm of the 
 mighty Mississippi. 
 
 For many years the canal was fed by lifting into it, by powerful hydraulic engines, 
 water from the Chicago Kiver. But, sir, an empire has grown up along its margins and in 
 its neighborhood. A great city sits at its head, a city of mercantile palaces. It numbers 
 a half million souls. It clears from its piers over 10,000 vessels annually. It receives each 
 year 100,000,000 bushels of grain, more than one-twentieth of all of America's product. 
 The forest sends to her yards its stately monarchs riven into 1,066,000,000 feet of lumber. 
 Four million one hundred and ninety thousand three hundred and six swine last year 
 entered her stock-yards ; and 2,983,486 bit the dust within her limits, to be turned into pork, 
 the food of millions in the Old World, who battle for the kings who " rule by the grace of 
 God." One million thirty-three thousand cattle pass through her annually to supply the 
 tables of Eastern States, and over 310,000 sheep are added to their larder. She pours nearly 
 $10,000,000 of internal revenue into the coffers of the Federal Treasury. Her post-office 
 distributes more newspapers than any other in the country. In letters it is the second, and 
 in revenues the third in the land. 
 
 Telegrams flit each hour of the day upon a thousand wires, over hill and dale, over 
 mountain and valley, and flash along the stilly floor of the turbulent Atlantic, to tell the 
 world what price Chicago merchants put upon a bushel of wheat or upon a barrel of pork. 
 These prices rule in every other mart. 
 
 Yet, sir, Chicago is only forty years old. You are in the prime of life, and can 
 remember that in your school days her name scarcely appeared upon your map. Why her 
 great development? What has given it birth ? Not her people's energies, but because the 
 place and it peculiar situation have developed the energies of her people. Men build up 
 localities, but localities and their inexorable necessities make men. 
 
 Seven and a half years since Chicago lay in ashes. In eighteen hours two hundred 
 million dollars' worth of her property floated over the lake in smoky carbon. One hundred 
 thousand people saw the sun of October 8, 1871, set upon their comfortable homes ; the 
 next sunset found them without a place wherein to lay their heads. Yet to-day the city is 
 rebuilt in added splendor, and its population has increased nearly 40 per cent. It is true her 
 people are in debt. Thousands who five years since were rich are now bankrupt. But their 
 wealth has only changed hands. The city is there, and her trade has steadily grown during 
 the past four years of disaster. 
 
 Sir, Chicago is not an exaggeration of western outgrowth. She has not kept pace with 
 the country tributary to her. Illinois is the, central figure of six imperial States. Her 
 population has grown in fifty years from 140,000 to over 3,000,000. In 1877 she grew over 
 250,000,000 bushels of corn one-fourth of all the corn grown in the United States. Iowa, 
 Wisconsin, and Minnesota, whose virgin prairies, fifty years since, had scarcely been trodden 
 by the foot of a white man, number not far from 4,000,000 people. Michigan and Indiana 
 have over 3,000,000. These six prairieStates have a greater population than Spain had, when 
 she ruled the world with a rod of iron, and when old ocean was grandiloquently styled the 
 Spanish lake. These six States harvested last year not far from 700,000,000 bushels of corn 
 and wheat, nearly one-half of all which was harvested in this broad land. They harvested 
 nearly one-third of all other cereals of the country. 
 
 Yet, sir, but a small proportion of the rich soils of these six States is under actual 
 cultivation. Go this coming June and traverse them by rail. Although population hugs 
 the railroads, yet your eye will be gladdened by stretches of thousands of acres golden with
 
 5 
 
 wild prairie flowers. An English traveler last year visiting Illinois called her prairies 
 "nature's floral bonanza." 
 
 These six States can feed the world. Vast and productive States are yet beyond them. 
 The world is hungry and asks for che&pened bread. How to move the produce of this great 
 grain-producing area, is a problem over which thinking men are pondering. A thousand 
 iron horses groan along the iron pathway leading down to the sea. Their insatiable maws 
 exact a burdensome tribute from the field and from the plow. Their hot breath blasts the 
 blossoms of hope and of profit. Their mailed hoof treads down the flower garden and the 
 green pasture. The morning sun catches the farmer at work, and its going down leaves 
 him wearied and doubtful. He has no time to store his mind with knowledge or to adorn 
 his home. His tread-mill life begins on the first day of January, and it ends not on the last 
 day of December. He sows and corporations harvest. 
 
 Sir, water next to air is God's freest gift to man. History goes not back to the day 
 when it was not his smoothest highway. It alone can wash out monopolies. Kailroads 
 may thrive along its margins, but they cannot oppress. Rivers and canals may not bear a 
 large amount of freights, but wherever they exist railway charges are light. Within fifteen 
 miles of the Illinois and Michigan Canal, railway freights are 20 to 30 per cent, cheaper 
 than they are farther off. But this canal floats only barges, and horses are their motors. 
 
 Sir, deepen this canal and improve the Illinois River, as Madison recommended, and 
 then great steamers will take cargoes from the ships of the lakes, and will bear them to the 
 far-off South or up the Missouri to the distant plains of the West. Three great railroads 
 start from Chicago ; they diverge to the north and the south, but come again together at 
 Council Bluffs. Another farther south reaches Kansas City near by. Trains of from thirty 
 to fifty cars, only a few hours apart, are ever thundering along these lines. They come 
 East laden with grain, with hogs and cattle, and with the treasures of the Rocky Mountains ; 
 they go West groaning under millions of feet of lumber and with the fabrics of the eastern 
 work-shops. Two great lines lead to the South ; they, too, take and bring their rich 
 freightage. 
 
 The Illinois and Michigan Canal to a great extent keeps down the charges of all of 
 these great railroad lines. It competes with them all to a great extent in all heavy goods. 
 Lumber and ready-made houses are conveyed on its barges to the Mississippi, and thence 
 to the decks of steamers to climb high up the Missouri, to furnish houses for the settlers of 
 the plains. 
 
 But, sir, how small the competition of these little horse-drawn barges compared to that 
 which the steamboat would afford. Deepen the Illinois and Michigan Canal to seven feet, 
 and steamers of a thousand tons burden would lay the ships of our fresh-water seas of the 
 North, side by side with the ocean ship of New Orleans. Steamers of a lighter burden 
 would ply between the lakes and the far-off Yellowstone. North and South, East and West 
 would be by it bound together. 
 
 Sir, is not this a national undertaking? I am tempted here to quote from the great 
 Missouri statesman, Benton. Twenty-nine years ago he thus spoke : 
 
 The nationality of the Chicago Canal and harbor at Its mouth are by no means new conceptions 
 with me. The river navigation of the great West is the most wonderful on the gJobe, ana since 
 the application of steam-power to the propulsion of vessels, possesses the essential qualities of open 
 navigation. Speed, distance, cheapness, magnitude of cargoes are all there, and without the perils 
 of the sea from storms and enemies. The steamboat is the ship of the river, and finds in the 
 Mississippi and its tributaries the amplest theater for the diffusion and the display of power. 
 "Wonderful river I connected with seas by the head and by the north, stretching its arms toward 
 the Atlantic and the Pacific ; lying in a valley, which is a valley from the Gulf of Mexico to Hudson's 
 Bay ; drawing its waters, not from the rugged mountains, but from the plateau of the lakes in the 
 center of the continent, and in communication with the sources of the Saint Lawrence and the 
 streams which take their course north to Hudson's Bay ; draining the largest extent of richest land ; 
 collecting the products of every clime, even the frigid, to bear the whole to market in the sunny 
 South, and there to meet the products of the whole world Such is the Mississippi. And who can 
 calculate the aggregate of its advantages and the magnitude of its future commercial results '( 
 
 Mr. Speaker, thus spoke a man whose gospel was the Bible and his country's Constitu- 
 tion. He was speaking to men who on one side saw looming up in the future a mighty 
 southern republic, and on the other to men who saw in the future an eastern empire an 
 empire of monopoly and gold ; an empire whose realm should be America, whose throne 
 would be in Wall street. His words sank deep into the minds of his heareis. But their 
 hearts were not touched. Lust of power and greed of wealth were uniting two diametric- 
 ally opposed factors. Mammon and ambition united these two factors in violent opposition 
 to his scheme. The one is broken forever. The South dreams not of a separate empire ; 
 she has learned, at a cost which the wildest imagining could not foresee, that the waters of 
 the Mississippi cannot wash the homes of a divided people. The West has learned that 
 gold is the heaviest of all task-masters. 
 
 Sir, the Mississippi and its navigable feeders give a water line of nearly twelve thous- 
 and miles. They water soil capable of producing nearly every fruit and grain known to 
 the world. The lakes have a shore line of over five thousand miles. Every foot of that
 
 shore line except on Lake Superior is as rich as the valleys of Judeae, the home of God's 
 chosen people. The rugged shores of Superior are solid with minerals almost as pure as 
 the product of the furnace. 
 
 Mr. Speaker, all of this vast water inland seaboard can be brought into union by a 
 canal thirty-six miles long, and yet our statesmen ask, is it national? 
 
 Sir, look again at the railroads centering at the mouth of this canal. Fourteen different 
 roads, whose arms reach over and through all of the grain-fields of the Northwest, center 
 at Chicago. One can read on the sides of cars any day within her limits the names of 
 nearly every railroad corporation of this northern continent. There stands a car belonging 
 to the Central Pacific. Coupled to it is one of the Grand Trunk of Canada. A Texan car 
 is being unloaded, and its stores are being transferred to another, whose ownership is in 
 Baltimore. A switch engine puffs by and crashes a car marked "Jackson and New Orleans;" 
 against another labeled "Hudson Kiver." A "Boston" car is coupled to one marked 
 "Northern Pacific." 
 
 All of the fourteen roads centering in Chicago, whose connections are like the nerves 
 f the body, leading to every extremity of the Republic, unite, and their rolling-stock is 
 freely transferred from one to another. They all run into a common stock-yard. They all 
 run into the great lumber-yards. They all lie along the huge grain elevators, many of 
 which have storage for over a million bushels each. These elevators handle a car-load of 
 grain as readily as a man can a bushel measure. Deep water washes their walls. A car-load 
 of wheat is lifted on one side and poured into the ship's hold on the other. Thirty thousand 
 bushels are thus poured into the vessel's hold, so that she can arrive and depart between the 
 rising and setting of a single day's sun. 
 
 At an expense of a few millions of money, the Mississippi steamer can be enabled to 
 lie against these elevators, or at the piers of a huge lumber-yard, and after unloading upon 
 the lake ships the produce of the far West or the extreme South, she can steam to Upper 
 Missouri, laden with lumber or ready-made houses, or to New Orleans with grain and pork, 
 and the minerals of the Superior, to be poured into an ocean-bound arogosy. A vast trade 
 would thus, Mr. Speaker, be divorced from the more costly railroad transportation. Cor- 
 porations would be brought to assume the semblance of having souls, though they possessed 
 none. 
 
 Sir, we often hear it said that traffic has left the smooth water-way to take the iron 
 one. When prices of commodities rule high, then high rates of transportation can be paid. 
 The high prices pay both producer and carrier. Under the effect of the abnormal prices 
 maintained during and after the late war, not only were the producers and the carriers 
 prosperous, but a vast army of middlemen sprang into existence. The great question with 
 all was rapid transit. To-day war and war rumors cause all the products of the West to 
 bear remunerative prices. But war may not come, and in no event can it be long main- 
 tained ; war is a costly luxury to kings. In these days of iron forts on the sea, Krupp-guns 
 and vast armies, the deadly conflict on Europe's little theater will soon be over. Our city 
 thoroughfares are crowded with well-dressed middlemen incapacitated by habit for manual 
 labor, to whom the future is dark and dismal. Their occupation died when prices fell. 
 When the electric flash from Europe shall tell us that peace is fixed, then will railroads 
 suffer and farmers will be forced to do as they have done in the past: burn corn for fuel. 
 
 Bills are introduced into this house to do violence to the Constitution by legislating 
 upon the tariff of prices to be charged by railroads. Gentlemen forget that the Congress 
 which make rules for the great corporations now grasping the diadem in this Republic 
 corporations which can never die, and which can ever reach the ear of the legislator can 
 also unmake rules, and that our most stringent laws have to be interpreted by courts, which 
 are often but the creatures of these corporations. If we wish earnestly to control these 
 deathless and soulless privileged beings, we should enable the people to keep them in check 
 by giving them sure and enduring competing modes of reaching markets. These are 
 water-ways. 
 
 The Erie Canal early last year reduced its tolls from one and a half cents to one cent 
 on a bushel of wheat. The grain shipped east in 1877 was less than in 1876, yet that 
 reduction of one-half cent per bushel added to the freightage of the canal about eighteen 
 million bushels. The railroads fought this reduction. They will always fight water-lines. 
 In England the great railway corporations have bought up all the canals of the kingdom. 
 Not being able to compete with them they have bought them, and now control all prices. 
 
 Sir, the great West and the great East have a common interest in this thing. The 
 West has the grain to sell ; the East wishes it for bread. The eastern railroad man will 
 fight either a steamboat-canal connection with Lake Erie to the Hudson or the one from 
 Lake Michigan to the Mississippi. Yet both will benefit the great masses of eastern consum- 
 ers. A deepened Erie canal will carry to them cheap food; a deepened canal in the West 
 will force railroads to lower their tariffs. 
 
 Sir, what will be the effect on the railroads themselves by these water-competing lines ?
 
 Not to cripple them, but to force them to an economical management. Railroads fail, not 
 because railroads cannot be made to pay a fair dividend upon honest cost, but because their 
 profits are eaten up by their high-salaried and ambitious officials. Their presidents and 
 directors own stocks in "fast-freight lines," in "star line?," in "Pullman palace-car" lines, 
 to which they make rates ruinous to the stockholders of the road, but paying enormous 
 dividends to the owners of these side-shows. Force railroads to enter into competition 
 with water highways, and these side-shows will die out and corporations will stop voting 
 their presidents salaries worthy of princes. The system of dead-heading legislators will be 
 ended. Congressmen and Secretaries of Departments will cease to ride in directors' cars, 
 but all will pay, and stockholders will cease to have their shares watered out of existence. 
 
 Mr. Chairman, in Saxony, where every inch of soil gives of its wealth, railroads run 
 along the Elbe. Yet the Government has walled in that shallow stream, making it keep 
 a single channel ; an endless chain stretches along its center; steamers, with machinery of 
 but little more power than a donkey-engine, roll this chain over a drum and stem the swift 
 current, dragging trains of heavy barges almost half a mile long. Everywhere in Germany 
 streams which by nature are unfitted for navigation are being turned into navigable waters. 
 And yet throughout all Germany the railroads are virtually owned by the Government ; 
 if not owned absolutely, an interest more or less great is in the Government Government 
 thus, in the interest of the people, keeps down its own railroad dividends. Tariffs of prices 
 are thus kept down to a minimum. 
 
 Mr. Chairman, this is a Government of the people, by the people, and for the people. 
 Shall Congress do less for the people than does Kaiser Wilhelm or the King of Saxony, who 
 rule by the grace of God 1 
 
 Sir, a nation's wealth consists not in the gold and silver coins or ingots which lie in its 
 treasury vaults. Crcesus proudly exhibited his golden hoards to the Greek, but the freeman's 
 brain was not dazed by the gilded spectacle ; for he knew the Lydian masses were poor and 
 Lydia was only waiting for a conqueror. A nation's wealth consists of its brawny muscles, 
 its working brains, its public buildings, its roads, its navigable rivers and canals, its grassy 
 pastures browsed upon by sleek and fatted flocks, its fields waving with corn, its barns and 
 granaries plethoric with food, its well-filled warehouses, its noisy workshops, its comfort- 
 able homes. 
 
 The business of its rulers is to enable the people to gain all of this wealth. Sir, a 
 statesman, once when asked how a people should be made happy, answered "reads !" How 
 to be rich, he answered, "roads I" How to be independent and prepared for war, his answer 
 was still "roads !" "roads !" John C. Calhoun said, "Let us bind the republic together; let 
 us conquer space by a perfect system of roads and canals." 
 
 Canals and well-filled rivers are but watery roads, roads which neither swallow us in 
 mire nor suffocate with dust. The project which I now favor is within a single State. It 
 is true I am deeply interested in it because that State is my own. But it will connect a 
 nation of States. The navigable waters which this canal will throw into communication 
 wash the soils of over twenty States. It has been favored by statesmen of every locality. 
 Sixty-four years ago the great expounder of the Constitution, James Madison, recommended 
 it ; Silas Wright and Horatio Seymour have written and spoken in its favor ; Benton and 
 Clay and a host of lesser statesmen did the same. Fifteen years since a convention in its 
 favor met at Chicago, convened on a call signed by ninety-eight Senators and members of 
 Congress. A committee appointed by that convention memorialized Congress in favor of 
 the near completion of this work. On that committee appeared the names of New England 
 DA.WES, Edwards and MORRILL, and McDougall from far-off" California. Sectionalism was 
 forgotten ; the far East united with the extreme West in its favor 
 
 Sir, since Benton and Wright spoke in favor of marrying the great Father of Waters to 
 one of the pure sisterhood of lakes, the stride of western improvement has been beyond any 
 parallel in history. The commerce of the lakes is greater than was the whole American 
 commerce on the seas a half century ago. The tonnage of the clearances from Chicago 
 alone amounts to nearly 3,500,000 tons a million more than it had been in 1867. The 
 shipments by the lake, of corn, was over 38,600,000 bushels ; of wheat, over 10,000,000 ; of 
 oats, 5,000,000; of grass and flaxseed, 48,000,000 pounds ; of oil-cake, 6,000,000; of lard, 
 21,600,000 pounds. Besides these there are other classes of produce which run into the 
 millions. 
 
 Her receipts of lumber I will give because of their almost fabulous amounts. Over 
 1,000,000,000 feet of boards, 464,880,000 shingles, 48,000,000 of lath, and 126,000,000 of 
 staves and heading ; and 806,000 tons coal. I have counted nearly forty ships and steamers 
 at one time in sight making for her creek. 
 
 A ship-canal would bring the Mississippi, Missouri, and Ohio steamers alongside ot 
 these lake craft. The minerals of Lake Supe'rior, the lumber of Canada and Michigan, the 
 hard coal of Pennsylvania, would pass from them directly to the river steamer. Cotton and 
 sugar would be transferred from the steamer to the ship for the lake cities and the east.
 
 8 
 
 Sir, a few years ago Lesseps became famous by dredging out the sands between the 
 Mediterranean and the Red Sea. And to-day two vast empires are threatening a war which 
 will cost untold millions of treasure, and will cause torrents of blood to flow to maintain the 
 neutrality of that highway to the East. Commercially this connection of the lakes and the 
 Mississippi is of more importance to America than the Suez canal is to England. 
 
 Mr. Speaker, is the thing practicable ? 
 
 In 1867 the great War Secretary, Stan ton, caused a survey to be carefully made of the 
 line of the Illinois anl Michigan Canal and the Illinois River with a view of determining 
 the practicability of the improvement as a war measure. General J. H. Wilson conducted 
 the survey and reported in 1868, showing not only the feasibility of the thing, but its easy 
 and certain working. By careful examination he found that a canal could be made along 
 the present bed from Chicago to Joliet, a distance of thirty-six miles ; and that the Illinois 
 and Des Plaines Rivers could be improved by locks and dams to the Mississippi River, so 
 as to give a depth of seven feet in ordinary stages of water, and a depth of six feet in the 
 lowest stages, throughout the entire length of the canal and river from Lake Michigan to 
 the Mississippi. 
 
 This low stage of water is of rare occurrence, not having been in the past but once in 
 over thirty years, and then only for a short time. General Wilson's plan was to widen the 
 present canal to one hundred and sixty feet, and to deepen it to seven feet, and to provide 
 canal and rivers with locks of three hundred and fifty feet length, seventy-five feet wide, 
 and seven feet deep. This would enable a gunboat of six feet draught to pass from lake to 
 river at all times, and a Mississippi steamer of one thousand tons to steam along it at fair 
 speed. He showed that the canal could be fed by a natural flow from the Chicago River. 
 Since his report was made, the city of Chicago, for the purpose of carrying off its sewerage, 
 has at its own expense deepened a part of the canal and thoroughly demonstrated the truth 
 of Wilson's calculations. 
 
 The Chicago River now flows steadily up stream and pours into the canal as through a 
 natural channel. Lake Michigan may be considered a vast fountain. It is said that it 
 empties through the straits at Mackinac more water than is poured into her by all of its 
 tributary rivers and creeks. And it has been calculated that a larger volume of water is 
 lifted from its surface in mist by a summer day's sun, than is poured into it in the same 
 time by all of its creeks and rivers. Its real and exhaustless supply comes from springs in 
 its cool depths. Their sources are in the far-off plains and mountains of the "West. The 
 lake's greatest ebb and flow does not exceed four feet, and that is caused by the shifting 
 courses of the winds. Rainy seasons do not lift it and dry seasons do not sensibly lower it. 
 
 Mr. Chairman, a canal one hundred and sixty feet wide and seven feet deep could be 
 fed by the lake without causing an appreciable lowering of its surface. A steady flow of 
 pure water would pour through the canal into the Illinois River, keeping it always full, 
 and would add much to the steadiness of the channel of the Mississippi from the mouth of 
 the Illinois to that of the Missouri. This great national interstate undertaking could be 
 completed at the present low prices of labor for from $9,000,000 to $12,000,000. 
 
 This sum could be raised by Government at a low rate of interest, and the tolls would 
 go far toward repaying interest and principal. The present canal has collected over 
 $300,000 in tolls in a single year. 
 
 Illinois has expended over $6,000,000 in making the canal and in locking and damming 
 the river. Two locks of three hundred and fifty feet in length have been completed. She 
 would surrender all she has put into it and would patriotically give it all up to have the 
 canal made national. 
 
 Sir, should not the Government do this thing? And, if done, is not this the time for 
 it? A million of strong men are now idle throughout the land; idle not from choice but 
 from dire necessity. Idleness has been termed "hell's workshop." Governments are for 
 the good of the people ; their legislation should have but one end, and that to better the 
 condition of the people. It may not be their duty to furnish work to the idle but it is 
 their duty to enable them to live and to enable the rich to employ the poor. But to-day 
 the rich do not employ the poor. Capital is idle, because capitalists are timid and lack 
 confidence in the outcome of investments. 
 
 Government cannot or does not restore confidence. Government is but the agent of 
 aggregated society; of aggregations of men. Should not Government do as men would do ? 
 Should it not improve its possessions when labor and material are cheap ? A prudent man 
 would and should do this. Why then should not the aggregation of men which we call 
 Government do the same ? When private enterprises are freely undertaken then govern- 
 mental undertakings inflate the price of labor and material. When private enterprises are 
 not undertaken, then governmental undertakings are not only prudent, but may be not only 
 an economic but a social and political necessity. 
 
 --* Sir, I said idleness is hell's workshop. Out of that pestilential laboratory stalk crime 
 and anarchy. Crime and anarchy are destructive of society and ultimately become the
 
 destroyer ot government itself. The arrest and punishment of a criminal cost large sums 
 of money. The conviction of a murderer costs Government thousands of dollars. Every 
 day's sittings of a court, with its jurors, bailiffs, and other paraphernalia, cost large 
 amounts. The bulk of a people's taxation is for the suppression and punishment of crime. 
 I have heard of the trial of a single offender costing a State over a hundred thousand dol- 
 lars. How much more beneficent the prevention of crime, and what so humane as the 
 removal of its cause? Several hundred millions of dollars are wrung from the people every" 
 year throughout the States to be spent in the protection of the innocent against the depreda-" 
 tion of the criminal, and for the punishment of the criminal. Men are to-day reading witb> 
 alarm of the threatened outbreaks of the commune. 
 
 A bill was lately introduced into this House to enable the President to enroll seventy- - 
 five thousand soldiers to protect us against these outbreaks this coming summer and fall. 
 Sir, why this alarm? Because men are hungry and discontented. We are asked to vote " 
 millions to enroll Americans into an Army and to arm them to shoot down Americans, . 
 hungry, starving Americans. , ,-' 
 
 Great God ! Sir, has this great Republic, the hope of the downtrodden in other, lands, 
 come to this ? Shall she be compelled to defend herself against herself with arms ?- , Has it 
 in a short hundred years been proven that this free Government is a failure ? for surely no 
 one will say it is not a failure if it is forced to exist not by the will of the people, but by 
 force of arms. 
 
 For many years Congress has been legislating for the rich. Our taxes come not.fr9m < 
 the rich, but from all alike. It is what a man eats, drinks, and wears which pay Federal- 
 taxes. A poor man eats and drinks as much as the rich, and pays the burden. Federal' 
 burdens fall upon men, not upon wealth. Colossal fortunes are growing up of aliftostf 
 fabulous proportions throughout the country fortunes either in the hands of individuals of 
 of corporations. None of them, or but few of them at least, are producers. Their wealth 
 is only an aggregation into the pockets of the few from the hands of the many. Equality 
 of wealth brings happiness to a people. For years you have been so legislating that rich 
 men nave been growing richer and poor men poorer. The latter are now poor to destitution. 
 In their name I beg you to give them bread. They ask it not in alms. They are not 
 beggars, unless to ask to work is to beg. They ask you to give them leave to win their daily 
 bread by the sweat of their faces. They are not idle because they are unwilling to work^ 
 but because they cannot find work. 
 
 Gentlemen ask why the people do not go from the cities to the farms. Ay, go to the" 
 farms to tramp by day and sleep by the roadside at night weary days tramping and 
 begging, and wives and children at home starving or living on charity. Sir, men are creat- 
 ures of habit. It is hard to break up habits. Those who are denizens of cities and workers 
 in shops know not how to work on the farm. Their habits unsuit them to it. They hop* 
 to get work from day to day, and night after night finds their hopes but ashes of deapair.. 
 Despair goes to the bottle for its Lethe. The bottle uncorked lets out its demon, and thous- 
 ands who, with work at moderate wages would be law-abiding citizens, become law-breakers. 
 There is no use in preaching temperance to hungry men ; a dime's worth of whisky 
 brings more temporary forgetfulness than a dime's worth of bread. Men in high places' 
 drown care in dissipation. No place in America has yet been so high as to be exempt. Give 
 the poor saan occupation and you have preached a more practical sermon than Murphy 
 could with his most impassioned exhortations. 
 
 Sir, a few great works ordered this session by Congress, would do more good than any ' 
 financial legislation. Its effect would be immediate and that is what is wanted. Con-- 
 tidence cannot come until employment shall commence. Set a hundred thousand strong; 
 arms at work on public undertakings, and five hundred thousand will find private employ- 
 ment as a result. 
 
 Do this, and you may cut down your Army, and there will be no great breaches of trie 
 peace. Eefuse this, and an army will be necessary and the road will be prepared over which 
 the Iron-Man now across the water learning the ways of kings, will march to despotism 
 Already men who think more of immediate security than of their country's liberty are 
 talking of him. Communism sends them to bed dreaming of rifled strong-boxes Their 
 morning prayer is for Grant ; and Grant means a republic in name, but an empire in fact 
 with wealth instead of blood the source of aristocracy. 
 
 Sir, communism was. born of Bourbon oppression, of taxes on the poor, but exemption 
 from taxes for the rich. Kings have nursed the commune, and then have had the prudence 
 to feed its members. Unequal taxation in America is fostering the French exotic and we 
 are asked to stifle it with bayonets and bullets, when the shovel and the pick in the hands 
 of the commune will cause it to die a natural death. Sir, give the people work and von 
 may cut your Army down to a skeleton.
 
 SPEECH OF 
 
 HON. CARTER H. HARRISON, 
 
 DELIVERED NOV. 7, 1877, 
 
 ON THE REPEAL OP THE RESUMPTION BILL. 
 
 I did not intend to make a speech, but after the speech to which we have listened from 
 the gentleman from Iowa [Mr. PRICK] I feel constrained to answer some of his arguments. 
 The gentleman let his eagle fly from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and takes the position that 
 this country is not to be measured by other lands Mr. Speaker, that is the misfortune in 
 this country. We have been constantly putting ourselves upon high places, and thanking 
 God we are not as other men ; that we, the great American people, are not to be governed 
 by the rules that govern the people of other lands. We imagine that we are a different 
 people from other people, and that the system of finance which is proper in other lands is 
 not proper in this. He tells us our land could hold any one of these foreign lands and not 
 miss the space it occupies ; that a railroad train can run from one end of one of these lands 
 to the other in a day, while here it would take ten days to perform the same feat. 
 
 Sir, France, with an area so small that a locomotive can run from one end of it to the 
 other between sunrise and sunset, yet has a bank circulation of five hundred and sixty-one 
 millions, a paper never dishonored by the government that issued it; a paper that has been 
 receivable from the first for every due that the government demanded from the people ; not 
 a paper that a debtor may pay to his creditor outside, but is refused by the government for 
 its own dues ; a paper that the government took and takes for his own debts ; a paper, which, 
 honored by the government that put it afloat, has been all the time nearly at par with coin, 
 and has for two years been absolutely at par. There are in the Bank of France to-day two 
 thousand and odd millions of francs in coin, over $400,000,000; and circulating among the 
 people in coin between five hundred and eight hundred millions of dollars, making in all 
 between one thousand and twelve hundred millions of coin, and five hundred and sixty-one 
 millions of paper ; a grand total of from fourteen hundred and sixty-one millions to seven- 
 teen hundred and sixty-one millions of circulation in that little country of France, where 
 you can go from one end of it to another with your bill of exchange in one day's time. 
 And yet we are asked here in America to resume specie payments, with six hundred and 
 seventy-one millions of paper to be redeemed and one hundred and fifty-one millions of 
 coin among the people to redeem it with; with the acknowledgment by the Secretary of the 
 Treasury that we may have ay, may have ! He thinks we will have by 1879 two hundred 
 and twenty-five millions of coin, we are going to redeem in this country, this vast country 
 over which the gentleman's eagle took so long a flight, so wearisome a flight, from the 
 Atlantic to the Pacific ; and he says it will bring no distress ! Ah, no ! No distress to his 
 friend, the bondholder. H-isees not the army of begging men already in distress. 
 
 Sir, look again at France; five hundred and sixty-one millions of paper the same as 
 coin ; four hundred millions in the vaults of the Bank of France ; eight hundred millions 
 among the people ; making seventeen hundred and sixty-one millions of money in France, 
 that little country. And yet France does not resume, and France prospers as no other 
 nation on earth does prosper. 
 
 Now go to England, and you will find there are two hundred and twenty-five millions 
 of paper, one hundred and eight millions of coin in the vaults of the Bank of England, 
 between five hundred and six hundred millions circulating among the people in coin, in 
 that little country where you can start from London and go to Inverness and back again in 
 less than forty-eight hours. 
 
 Mr. PRICE Will the gentleman yield to me for a question? 
 
 Mr. HARRISON. Yes, sir. 
 
 Mr. PRICE. I wish to ask the gentleman whether I have misstated the amounts per 
 capita in England and in this country. 
 
 Mr. HARRISON. Yes, sir, I will show you how. In England they have two hundred 
 and twenty-five millions of paper, one hundred and eight millions coin in the vaults of the 
 Bank of England, five hundred and twenty-five millions coin circulating among the people. 
 And that, sir, is considered as a very moderate estimate. You can divide that amount by the 
 population of England and find the circulation per capita far greater than here. In this 
 country we have six hundred and twenty-one millions of circulation, for our coin can not 
 count in this country. Our gold is not money ; it is simply a commodity. It is held by
 
 11 
 
 banks and bullionists as a reserve. Aye, like skillful commanders, they hold this reserve in 
 hand, ready for that fatal day in January, 1879, when it can be thrown with headlong fury 
 upon the ranks of the terror-stricken debtor upon the people ; when mortgages can be 
 foreclosed and the mortgagee alone can buy ; when sheriffs and marshalls can sell and judg- 
 ment creditors alone can purchase. When the bondholder and the bullionist will be taken 
 upon a high mount and will be told that all this grand country shall be his. And this time 
 the devil will be able to deliver, and he will deliver. He will deliver to the men who for 
 year* have been bending the knee to the demon gold, the demon resumption, and the debtors; 
 the people will have no redress. 
 
 Mr. HAZELTON. Will the gentleman allow me to ask him where he gets those 
 figures ? I simply want to know for my own satisfaction. 
 
 Mr. HARRISON. I acknowledge I am now taking them from memory. [Laughter] 
 I believe, however, they will be found to be accurate. Not having statistics before me I 
 must trust to memory, and it is accurate enough to enable me to approximate to the exact 
 figures accurate enough for my argument. 
 
 Now, to go to Germany. There they have two hundred and two millions of paper, one 
 nundred fifty-four millions of coin in the vaults, five hundred and twenty-five millions of 
 coin circulating among the people eight hundred and eighty -one millions in all. And yet 
 the gentleman from Iowa says that ours is the second government in the world in respect 
 to amount of circulation ! Sir, 1 am speaking extempore. I had no idea of speaking on this 
 question until a few moments since. But the gentlemen from Iowa forces me to attempt to 
 refute his arguments, and if he will take his pencil he can easily find, by comparing the 
 actual circulation in this land and in other countries with the respective population of diff- 
 erent countries, that we have the smallest circulation of any of them, and vastly the smallest; 
 and yet, owing to our vast distances, owing to the huge distances which must be traversed 
 by bills of exchange to say nothing of the eagle the gentleman let fly we require a pro- 
 portionably larger per capita circulation. 
 
 Mr. PRICE. I do not want to controvert any position the gentleman may assume, but 
 1 make this assertion : I assert from figures obtained from authentic sources that Germany 
 has a circulation of only $20 per capita, that England has $21.45, and that we have $21.99. 
 
 Mr. HARRISON. I have not reduced the figures which are in my memory and are 
 firmly fastened there. I have not reduced them to show the amount per capita; but if the 
 gentleman will figure it out according to the number of population in this country he will 
 find I am correct. If he will drop his golden pencil and use a poor man's Faber, he will find 
 I am correct. 
 
 Mr. PRICE. You make your figures ; I have got mine from authentic sources. 
 
 Mr. HARRISON. This is in Germany ; a country where you can by the postal service 
 draw a bill of exchange by lightning that will be answered from one end of the country to 
 the other ; where the telegraph is a part of the postal service ; where every village, ay, 
 every railway station has its telegraph office ; and where twenty cents carry twenty words 
 to any point in the German Empire. By the way, in England and France the same fact 
 exists; there lightning is but Jittle dearer than pen, paper and ink. In Germany, a 
 country you can reach every part of by going from the center through either of its provinces 
 in a single day ; yet they have eight hundred and twenty-two millions of currency in paper 
 and coin, and we have six hundred and seventy-one millions. Six hundred and seventy- 
 one millions of money; six hundred and seventy-one millions of the people's money. The 
 bullionist's gold, the poor man, the debtor, the great toiling millions know only by tradition. 
 Gold is the denizen of that to the millions of toilers terra incognita, the strong box of the 
 Wall street bullionist. Six hundred and seventy-one millions divided by forty-five millions 
 of men inhabiting thirty-eight State?, many of them as large as all England ; many of them 
 as large as all France, as large as all the states of the realm of Kaiser Wilhelm. Divide six 
 hundred and seventy-one millions by forty-five millions, and you have less than $15 per 
 capita. And yet we are told we can contract one-half, to seven and one-half dollars per 
 capita, and we are told it will bring no distress. Great God ! is bankruptcy no distress? 
 Is ruin, beggary, homelessness, rags, and famine no distress ? 
 
 Now, sir, let us look a little further and see what will be the effect of the resumption of 
 specie payments. We propose to redeem in 1879 six hundred and seventy-one millions of 
 paper with one hundred and fifty-one millions of coin to-day in the country, and with the 
 hope expressed by Mr. Sherman and by the gentleman from Ohio [MR. GARFIKLD] that we 
 will have two hundred and seventy-five millions. Sir, what will this country, extending 
 over such a vast area, do with $225,000,000 for that purpose ? Two hundred and seventy- 
 five milliors to base a currency upon, when it is known that no country on earth ever sus- 
 tained specie payments of paper unless the value of its currency was equal to the value of 
 its coin. We did, before the war, attempt to keep afloat paper, when the coin in the bank- 
 vaults was one-third of the circulation. And yet during the whole decade before the war 
 there was as much coin in the United States as paper. One-third of that coin was in bank-
 
 12 
 
 vaults, but outside, among the people, there was coin enough, together with that in the bank- 
 vaults, to make an amount greater than the paper in circulation. Before the war there 
 were two hundred and twenty-five millions paper and two hundred and sixty-five millions 
 of coin in bank-vaults and in circulation. And yet, every ten years we had panics which 
 forced suspension of specie payments. And now, with all this knowledge, it is proposed 
 that we shall go on and resume, and the Secretary of the Treasury says that he will be able 
 to resume in 1879, when he has the history of the world before him, showing that it will 
 bring destruction to every man who owes a dollar in his land. 
 
 In 1869, as a Senator from Ohio, he drew a picture of what was to follow the terrible ca- 
 tastrophe of declaring a day for specie resumption. He pictured what would follow in the 
 wake of that act. He showed that every man who owed a hundred dollars would have to 
 pay $125 and that every man who owed a hundred bushels of wheat would have to pay one 
 hundred and twenty-five bushels. Every man who had bought a farm and had paid one- 
 fourth of the debt would lose the whole. And yet that man who had so read history and 
 understood what must be the effect of fixing an arbitrary day for resumption, is to-day re- 
 lentlessly and remorselessly urging specie resumption, when he knows that the very bone 
 and sinew of the land, that class that builds our railroads and sets in motion our machinery, 
 the hopeful, energetic class, ever with something in view, ever struggling to add to the 
 world's wealth, the men who move the material world, who set its furnaces afire and dis- 
 charge all the most important duties of labor, will be ruined by such an act. 
 
 The gentlemen from Pennsylvania since I arose has spoken of the history of England in 
 1819 to 1825, and he has already taken away from me the point I desired to make, for he read 
 what I intended to quote from memory. In 1818 there were nearly fifty millions in the Bank 
 of England ; in 1819 there were forty millions and the reduction went on step by step until 
 in 1821 the amount had been reduced to twenty-eight millions. Sir, what was the result of 
 this fearful contraction ? Mr. Allison tells us that ruin spread abroad in England. The 
 Bank of England discounts fell from one hundred and three millions in 1815 to twenty-three 
 millions in 1820, and then sank in 1821 to thirteen millions. The small farms were sold, 
 so that to-day 36,000 English landholders own the lands which fell into their hands in that 
 disastrous era. We are to be driven on to this state of things in this country, because we 
 are now told we must not violate the plighted faith of the Government. Ay, it is plighted 
 faith to the bondholders. But there is implied always an obligation on the part of the Gov- 
 ernment to protect the interests of the laborer. There is a plighted faith to him. The rich 
 can protect themselves. The Government alone can protect the poor. But here every obli- 
 gation appears to be upon the poor man and running to the rich man. Sir, England had 
 its strike, and a large addition had to be made to its volunteer force to keep the peace. We 
 had a strike here this year, and I tell gentlemen, if this thing is not to be stopped I make 
 no threat, but I make a prophecy that People of the West will never submit to the people 
 of the East in robbing them for the benefit of the bondholders. 
 
 Mr. PRICE. I desire to ask the gentleman a piain question. I want to know whether 
 the laboring-man will not feel as good when he gets a dollar worth one hundred cents as 
 when he gets one worth ninety-seven cents ? 
 
 Mr. HARRISON. Ay ! But I call to mind the fact that the gentleman did not vote for 
 the silver bill. He says to the laboring-man, Take your dollar for your hard day's work 
 in two half dollars, worth ninety-one cents ; it is good enough for you. And when you 
 wish to pay your rent of $20 or your note of $50, go and sell your subsidiary coin ; lose nine 
 cents on each dollar. 
 
 Mr. PRICE. That was all made right in the silver bill. 
 
 Mr. HARRISON. But you and the bulk of your party did not vote for the silver bill. 
 Mr. PRICE. I did. 
 
 Mr. HARRISON. Then there is one step the gentleman has taken on the right road. 
 Go on, and there will be hope that you may get all right. 
 
 Mr. PRICE. We want plenty of silver dollars ; that is what we want. 
 Mr. HARRISON. Ay! Plenty of silver dollars. But all the mints in all America 
 cannot coin, before 1879, over $50,000,000. The silver bill will do great good. It will be 
 food for the imagination ; and statesmen should legislate for the imagination as well as the 
 judgment. The silver bill will be such food. It is a step in the right direction. The 
 laborer, the debtor, sees in it a glimmer of hope that Congress is not body and soul the tool of 
 the bondholder. 
 
 Sir, the gentleman says paper is to-day almost at par. That gold is only worth 1.02|; 
 that we have almost reached hard-pan. Hard-pan ! ay, hard-pan to the idle million of 
 willing toilers. Hard-pan ! ay, hard-pan to millions of hopeful men who are willing to work ; 
 who stalk about the country begging for leave to toil. Hard pan ! ay, to the million who 
 crave but to earn their bread, as God commands, by the sweat of their faces ; but in want 
 of work are the recipients of charity or niggardly credit. Hard-pan to the millions of hope- 
 ful men who have put their all into enterprises based upon prices which were the result of
 
 13 
 
 the inflation which ruled from 1866 to 1869. Millions; ay, Mr. Speaker, millions of farmers, 
 mechanics, house-builders, forest-cutters, and prairie-breakers, entered upon enterprises 
 based upon those plethoric times. -They have hoped and hoped for better times. It is hard- 
 pan indeed for these millions. 
 
 But the fat bullionist leans upon his strong box, and blandly tells us these men ought 
 not to have gone in debt. They deserve to suffer. He pats his rounded vest, locks his box, 
 and with a gentle "tra-la-la" saunters off to Delmonico's to dine on terrapin and reed-birds, 
 and washes from his mind all thought of the starving, suffering millions in Burgundy at 
 $10 a bottle 
 
 Sir, they tell us gold is only 2f above paper. Yes, sir ; and gold was only 6 per cent, 
 above paper in 1818 in England, and Kicardo said that 5 per cent, was the measure of the 
 contraction necessary to bring resumption. That 5 per cent, eliminated not only all the 
 paper but nearly all the gold from trade. That 5 per cent, banished confidence from the 
 British Isles, and but for orders in council would probably have driven the king from his 
 throne. 
 
 Sir, before the war, we had in the Northwest a paper circulation which was generally 
 less than 1 per cent, under par. Yet not one of the banks which issued that paper considered 
 it safe to issue a five dollar bill. They issued ones and twos ; so that when the broker came 
 to the counter for gold the teller could spend a day in paying a hundred or so dollars. When 
 a depositor took his money to his bank the teller sorted it as a huckster sorts his apples, so 
 that he could put in one pigeon-hole the notes of bank-notes worth par, in another the notes 
 worth a quarter less than par, and so on. Those which were 1 per cent, below par he sent 
 off for gold, or eastern exchange, which was the same thing. 
 
 Now, sir, in 1879 Mr. Sherman resumes. The banker will sort his money. His green- 
 backs he will put in one drawer, his national bank notes, of banks near by, in another, those 
 of far-off banks in another. He will send his greenbacks and get gold. If gold is worth 
 1 per cent, premium, he can send his notes from Cincinnati, Saint Louis, and Chicago to 
 New York and get gold, sell it and get his return in five days. In thirty days he will make 
 6 per cent. If gold is per cent premium, he will make in thirty days 3 per cent. If it is 
 worth J per cent, he will make 1 per cent. Sir, what legitimate business, even in good 
 times, can compete with such interest ? 
 
 Sir, we may reach resumption by the present road. But we shall do so by ruining 
 thousands. Prices of labor may continue so low that we may undersell foreign pauper labor. 
 "We may continue to increase the balance of trade in our favor. Continue to reduce wages 
 and America will become a land of paupers and will be able to compete with the pauperism 
 of other lands. This may sustain resumption. But is it to be desired under such circum- 
 stances. Sir, Repeal your resumption law. Leave the matter to the business interests of the 
 Country, and then resumption will be reached by easy stages, by healthy growth, which 
 will ruin none, which will not enrich the few at the expense of the many. 
 
 The national banks will have to redeem in greenbacks, so that national bank notes will 
 be worth but little under greenbacks, so that half per cent, premium, when the United States 
 shall be the payer payer of large notes will be difference enough between gold and paper 
 to drive out of existence nearly all the circulation. And then we will reach hard-pan indeed. 
 And then one wail will be heard from one end of the land to the other. A wail, not from 
 railroad employes but from every class of laborers. A wail which will soon be turned to 
 curses. Curses deep, long, bitter ! 
 
 Sir, I plead to the East not to press this people too far. The pulpy worm will turn 
 upon the foot which presses it. Beware of a people who are the governors of this land : the 
 holders of its ballots. The West pleads to the East. The people pleads. They tell you they 
 are patient, but think not that Delilah has shorn them of all their locks. Their locks are 
 upon brawny shoulders. Your temple may be upon solid rock, but its pillars are neither so 
 strong nor so far apart that they cannot reach them. Beware lest you laugh not too loud at 
 their eyeless agony, for in their hungry famine they may reach out their arms and crush 
 you and your golden fabric. 
 
 Georgia lately repudiated a debt fastened upon her by fraud. The people are beginning 
 to think that a coin-drawing bond is a fraud, and the people, when moved by hungry frenzy, 
 are not good or cool logicians. Thousands of men in some of the rich eastern cities are 
 already dreaming of an empire, with themselves the moneyed aristocracy. Let them remember 
 that republics turn not to empires, except through a baptism of blood. 
 
 Mr. KELLEY. I move that the House do now adjourn.
 
 SPEECH OF 
 
 HON. CARTER H. HARRISON, 
 
 OF ILLINOIS. 
 IN THE HOUSE or REPRESENTATIVES, 
 
 Friday, June 7, 1878. 
 The House having under consideration the bill (H. R. No. 2133) to fix the pay of letter carriers 
 
 Mr. HARRISON said : 
 
 Mr. SPEAKER: I will not avail myself of the general privilege which has just been 
 given to gentlemen to print their remark* on this bill in the RECORD. I find it much easier 
 to have the stenographers write for me than to write for myseli. But I do not propose to 
 occupy the attention of the House for any length of time, as it is so late 
 
 I had hoped, sir, to have the opportunity of discussing this question at length to-night, 
 for it is one to me of very great interest and I think of very great interest to the country. 
 But, sir, we have wasted now three hours and a half 
 
 Mr. BANKS. Not we; we did not do it. 
 
 Mr. HARRISON. In child's play. When I said " we " I meant the House or rather 
 the enemies of the bill in the House who have wasted time. 
 
 Mr. BANKS. That is it. 
 
 Mr. HARRISON. Very well, sir. I will then put it, that this evening has been 
 wasted in idle wrangling by the enemies of this bill, by the enemies of a class of men as 
 worthy of protection and of recognition as any other class of men in the United States. 
 
 Mr. Speaker, the advantages of postal facilities runs pari passu in every land with the 
 progress of education and of knowledge. And what wonderful strides have men made in 
 this direction in your and my recollection ! When I first went off as a boy to a distant 
 school, my letters from my home in Kentucky took about seven days to reach me at my 
 New England college. I had to pay on each single letter a postage of twenty-five cents, a 
 rather heavy tax upon my slender allowances. To-day I get a letter from Chicago in less 
 than two days, and I pay three cents postage ; a letter reaches me from far-off Germany 
 thirteen days after it is indited, and the postage is five cents. 
 
 Sir, this old world of ours, which four hundred years ago was thought to be an almost 
 boundless realm, its unknown ultima Thule at an almost fabulous distance, is grown to be 
 but a little globe. I can recall the feelings of half awe with which I Ic-oked for the 
 first time upon a man who had been around the world. I was fast approaching my manhood, 
 but I almost wondered at his dark hair ; he had been around the world and was yet too 
 young to be gray ! Three years since I was journeying from Chicago to New York with a 
 Swiss of seventy-six years, who was making all alone a pleasure trip around our sphere 
 He had gone by way of Suez, India, and China, to Japan ; had crossed the broad Pacific 
 and this continent, and would reach his Alpine home within six months from the day he 
 left it. In 1876 I met an Englishmen aboard a ship from New York to Liverpool, who 
 had started for China eastward from London eighty-three days before. He girdled the 
 globe in about ninety days, and said he had not been in a hurry. 
 
 Steam carries our persons around the world in eighty days, and the lightning flashes 
 our thoughts over the same track while our heart records a few of its pulsations. Man has 
 caught the powerful forces of nature ; his genius has harnessed steam and its boundless 
 strength, and it bears him over mountain roads and over the pathless ocean, more tractable 
 than the gentlest horse. A bridle has been put upon the subtle lightning, and it is guided 
 through the air, beneath the earth, and along the unseen depths of oceans, by a less devious 
 path than that on which is led the meek- eyed ox. 
 
 Sir, " progress" and " onward" are the rallying words of this generation. In nothing 
 should progress be more encouraged than in bringing our people together in every part ot 
 the land. The telegraph annihilates space and time ; but the telegraph cannot carry our 
 lengthy messages to our friends or to our business correspondents ; it cannot convey our 
 confidential communications ; these must be borne by the mail. 
 
 Fast and regular mail-carriage is the first requisite for this service. The second is, fast 
 and regular distribution of the mails when carried. The first step in this latter direction 
 was the system of boxes, into which the citizen could see if he had anything due him with- 
 out waiting for the old slow process of general delivery. This required many clerks. Then 
 came the l.jck-box, which enables one to receive his mails without the aid of a delivery 
 clerk. And finally came the free carrier system.
 
 15 
 
 The style " free delivery " misleads very many persons. It is a misnomer. It is free 
 delivery of all letters bearing a three-cent stamp, but it is not free delivery of local letters. 
 A drop-letter bearing; a one-cent stamp is delivered at the office to callers, and necessitates 
 a clerieal force sufficient for the proper distribution and delivery thereof. But in cities, 
 having the carrier system, one-cent drop-letters are rare. A two-cent stamp gives the 
 drop-letter to the carrier, and in consideration of the additional stamp he delivers the letter 
 at the place to which it is addressed. 
 
 Now, sir, what do the statistics of these local letters show? That at first the facilities 
 of the system were not understood by the people. They did not avail themselves of it, and 
 for a number of years the carrier system .was a tax upon the Post-Office Department. By 
 steady degrees the receipts have been approaching nearer and nearer each year to the ex- 
 penses. In 1875 equality was reached and receipts were greater than expenses ; I mean the 
 receipts in cities having the carriers, passed beyond the expenses in such cities In 1877 
 the profits exceeded $360,000; and taking the period elapsed of the present fiscal year as a 
 guide for the whole year, the profits will exceed a half million. 
 
 Sir, in making these estimates only the local matter has been brought into calculation 
 only the receipts and expenses of the delivery of local matter paying a stamp of two cents. 
 
 But, sir, there is another factor which should be taken into calculation. The corre- 
 spondence of business men in cities having carriers, is not exclusively with those who also 
 live in the same class of cities. Their correspondence is mostly with people in the country 
 or in small towns. They receive their letters freely and frequently ; they answer the more 
 freely and more frequently. I am at my desk in a city'; the carrier comes in, hands me a 
 letter. Knowing he will soon be around gathering up the mails, I answer while the thing 
 is fresh, and the Government receives my three cents. Whereas if I got my letters less 
 frequently and at the post-office, I would wait till I reach my office to answer; and waiting 
 breeds waiting. 
 
 This may seem at first glance a strained argument ; but let any one look into the main- 
 springs of his actions, and he will find that there can be no calculation as to the effects ot 
 these habits of promptitude thus engendered Go, sir, into a city office and mark the 
 difference as to promptness and regularity between the mode of doing business there and in 
 a country town. 
 
 And this effect is not produced alone among business correspondence. It extends to 
 the social interchange of letters. A letter comes to a person in the country ; it is read and 
 laid by to be answered hereafter. How often do we find that the hereafter is not reached 
 for days or weeks, or perhaps drops forever out. But in a city, a letter comes to my house ; 
 it is read and at once answered, and my answer goes into the street-box close by, one of the 
 adj uncts of the carrier system. 
 
 Sir, I remember well when postage was dropped down from twenty-five cents. People 
 said it would ruin the Government. The farmer thought he was to be taxed out ot exist- 
 ence for the benefit of silly letter-writers. What is the use of so many letters, he thought. 
 Not long since I read an old letter from my grandfather in Kentucky to my father at 
 college in Virginia. He acknowledges with thanks a letter written two months before, 
 
 brought by politeness of Mr. . And when I was at school two letters a month was all 
 
 my widowed mother exacted. But when my family was abroad for three years beyond the 
 ocean, I averaged writing and receiving two letters a week. 
 
 Why is this? Increasing facilities cause to grow increasing desires until they become 
 necessities of habit. A three-cent postage has not proved injurious to the country's finan- 
 ces. It is the transportation of other matters than letters and postal cards which causes 
 the deficiency in the Post-Office Department. And even now the deficiency does not arise 
 in the cities of carriers, nor in the States where they principally abound. 
 
 Sir, I must think the opposition to this bill comes with bad grace from many members 
 who oppose it. The opposition comes almost exclusively from gentlemen representing 
 comparatively sparsely settled districts. They seem to think they and their constituents 
 have no interest in the thing, and that we are trying to add to their burdens. In this, 
 with due respect to them, I must say they are mistnken. 
 
 I have shown how the expenses in what I will call, for short, carrier cities are less than 
 the receipts, and less than the receipts on local matter. But permit me to call their atten- 
 tion to another feature of the matter. How do the people of cities live and for whom do 
 they work ? For the people in the country. Do away with the country and cities will 
 tumble down Do away with cities and the people in the country will cease to grow rich 
 or to enjoy any luxuries except those grown under their individual daily toil. The farmer 
 of Illinois and the West could eat their hog and hominy, but they would soon drop into an 
 aimless life; and the planters of South Carolina would boil and consume their rice. 
 Through the towns and cities is the interchange of commodities which elevates all and 
 makes life a joy. 
 
 The farmer sells his produce to the merchant in the city and buys from him his goods.
 
 16 
 
 They are in constant communication, constant bargaining; perhaps not directly, bat 
 through the agency of the merchant of the smaller town. Every facility for doing business 
 given to the man in the city, helps more or less directly the man in the country, as evflry 
 growing, waxing day on the farm benefits the dependent people in the city. Prosperous 
 farmers build up cities ; prosperous cities make the farmer rich and happy. 
 
 But, sir, it is not a fair thing for gentlemen representing country districts, especially 
 country districts sparsely settled, to decry the carrier system. The expense of the Pogt- 
 Office Department last year was, in round numbers, $31,000,000; the receipts, $28,500,000, 
 in round numbers. Now, sir, the belt of country which contain the bulk of the eighty- 
 seven free-delivery cities extends from Massachusetts west of Iowa. This belt contains fifty- 
 nine out of these eighty-seven carrier cities. Six States in this belt, Massachusetts, New 
 York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, have forty-three of these cities. These 
 are the States through which the great trunk lines of railroads run. These great railroads 
 carry vast numbers of tons of mail matter, and are paid a large portion of the money which 
 is the outlay of the Post-Office Department. A great portion of this outlay is for through 
 mails, which go to other States, and therefore is not properly chargeable to the citizens of 
 these six States. 
 
 Yet, sir, we find that out of the $31,000,000 expended by the Department, $14,000,000 
 are expended in these six States. That is a million and a half dollars less than one-half of 
 the whole amount expended. And bear in mind that a large portion of that expenditure is 
 for through mails distributed at Boston, New York, and Philadelphia, for foreign countries 
 from all parts of America ; and carried to Philadelphia, Cincinnati, Louisville, Saint Louis, 
 and Chicago, to be distributed for the great South and West to the whole Union, in fact. 
 In fine, a very large portion of that $14,000,000 should be charged up to the more sparsely 
 settled States. 
 
 Now mark the other side of the balance-sheet. The receipts of the Departments from 
 all the States and Territories were last year $28,400,000, while the receipts from those six 
 States were $15,162,000, about one million more than one-half of all of the receipts. Thus 
 it will be seen that the Government makes a profit of $2,500,000 by its mail service in those 
 six States. And if those six States should be credited with the cost of the through mails 
 passing through them, it would be found that those six States pay a profit to the Govern- 
 ment of not far from $3,000,000, to $4,000,000, and that the belt of States in which are 
 located two-thirds of the free-delivery cities, would pay into the Treasury of the United 
 States a profit of from four to six millions of dollars on its postal service. 
 
 The Post-Office Department could put a free delivery into every town of five thousand 
 people in this belt of States, and the mail service would not cost the Government one cent 
 if it were not for those States more sparsely settled, the Kepresentatives from which decry 
 the free-delivery system on this floor. 
 
 Now, Mr. Speaker, do not understand me for one moment to complain of the fact that 
 other States are thus an expense to the Government ; far from it. I wish to give them 
 every facility within the power of the Government. But I have set forth these facts, be- 
 cause I believe these gentlemen from the country districts have not had their attention 
 drawn to them. 
 
 Mr. . Will the gentleman allow me to ask him a question ? 
 
 Mr. HARBISON. Oh, yes 
 
 Mr. . You speak of country districts and country people. Do you think it fair 
 
 and just that the mail should be delivered to citizens of cities by letter-carriers, while at 
 the same time country people have to travel ten or fifteen miles to get their letters ? 
 
 Mr. HARRISON. My friend has just come in. If he had heard my remarks a few 
 moments since he would not have asked that question. The constituents of the gentleman 
 corresponding with constituents of my own, or buying goods and selling products to them, 
 reap a part of the benefit of the free delivery ; not directly, but indirectly. That I have 
 been trying to show in my remarks, which the gentleman has not heard. Sir, in England 
 to-day the letter-carriers go to every hamlet, and I hope to see the same in this country, or 
 at least in the more thickly settled parts of the land. 
 
 Mr. . Let us do that first, before you extend the system into the cities. The 
 
 country builds your cities. 
 
 Mr. HARRISON. It took the eternal Jehovah six days to build the universe ; and we 
 cannot build up this country in a day. If the gentleman will read my remarks when 
 printed he will see I have made no invidious remarks about the country districts. Sir, I 
 am one of those who believe that the farmer is the bed-rock upon which the nation's wealth 
 is built. The farmer is the man who gives us all the wealth of the land, and far be it from 
 me to do anything which can possibly injure him. And if the gentleman would try to give 
 his farmer constituents the facts in this matter, he will do well. I would suggest that he 
 scatter my speech among them. 
 
 Mr. Speaker, I did not intend at this late hour to say as much as I have, but I hope
 
 yoi will indulge me for a few moments longer. I regret very much that I did not get 
 thi floor when the House was fuller, for I was very anxious to be heard on this question. 
 Si 1 , I presented a petition, signed by, I think, about six thousand Chicago business men, 
 asnng us to do justice to the carrier. I looked on the petition and saw that our best men's 
 nanes were appended to it. Petitions have come up from many other cities; in fact I 
 betieve from every one of the eighty-seven in which there are free deliveries. I think the 
 prayer of these petitions should be affirmatively answered. 
 
 Sir, in my city there are one hundred and fifty-seven carriers. Last year they deli- 
 vered nineteen million letters, besides vast quantities of papers and periodicals. These 
 mn, in addition to this, gather up probably as many more letters from the street boxes. 
 
 They leave their homes at six in the morning. They first receive and sort out their 
 letters and papers, and then they start on their tread-mill labor. In sunshine and shadow, 
 through storm and sweltering heat, through rain and snow, from early morning till late in 
 the afternoon, they are tramping, tramping all day on the tramp. With haversack on 
 shoilder, weighing from fifteen to thirty pounds, they trudge through mud and slush, 
 cliabing stairs or descending into basements many of them walking over twenty miles a 
 day bearing tidings of gladness, or carrying woe-burdened letters ; bearing packages of 
 jewe.ry, checks, money, bees and horned frogs, sermons filled with spiritual light, and 
 tinted missives redolent of amorous longings ; specimen bottles of sparkling wine, and sen- 
 atorial wit franked from the other end of this Capitol ; photographs, laudanum, and sopori- 
 fic eloquence from this Hall. 
 
 Sir, many of these carriers have an arm or a hand buried on some southern field. All 
 must bs alert, agile, and quick-witted, able to spell a name over which you or I would give 
 up in despair. All must be strong of body and of an honesty above suspicion. 
 
 Sir, it does seem to me that if any class of men in governmental employ should be ade- 
 quately paid it is the carrier. Their average pay cow is under $800, three-fifths of what 
 is paid yonder gentleman who pulls a string to open the door for us to enter this Hall dur- 
 ing the half of each day of the session. Our friend there knows nothing but rest and is 
 weary of it. The carrier knows no rest from early morning to late afternoon. If he be sick 
 for a day he has to put some one to work in his place. He has no one to spell him, or 
 rather he has to pay for his alternate in the event of sickness to himself or to his family. 
 A few of these alternates are attached to each office. They supply the places of those who 
 are sick. They average about $400 a year, taken from the wages of those whose places 
 they supply. 
 
 These men I suspect do more hard work than any other class of employes in the ser- 
 vice of the Government ; not simply manual labor, but brain labor as well. A good car- 
 rier should be capable of being good at almost any business, and he should have a physique 
 fit for a hod-carrier. My friend there who objects to this bill has his mail brought to his 
 room morning and evening, and during the day he claps his hands for a page and sends 
 him down to the post-office ; yet, sir, he is unwilling that the businessmen of the cities should 
 have the facilities which the carrier system gives, though all of those advantages aid the 
 city merchant to do a better part by and for the people in the country. The farmer fur- 
 nishes the foundation of the nation's wealth, but it is the city man who moves that wealth. 
 It is he who takes the idle grain from the farmer's barn and by the alchemy of trade and 
 exchange turns it into silks and fine linens. 
 
 Sir, I and my constituents make our bread by doing the barter for the farmer. Directly 
 or indirectly I am working for him and making him work for me. My office is one or two 
 miles from the post-office. The letters of my country correspondents are brought to me by 
 the carrier. They receive immediate attention. If there were no carriers I would get my 
 letters less frequently and thereby my correspondents would not be so promptly attended 
 to, or I would have my clerk go oftener to the post-office and I would in one way or an- 
 other charge up his salary to my correspondents. 
 
 Mr. Speaker, I said there was a mistaken notion among many that the carrier system 
 was a free delivery, and was run at the expense of the portions of the country not so favored. 
 I have shown that it was a misnomer to call it a free delivery ; that its expenses were di- 
 rectly defrayed by the local business of the places in which if is in vogue, and have tried to 
 show that it increased largely the receipts of the office. 
 
 This latter proposition is not susceptible of positive and direct proof. That can be 
 shown only by circumstances tending to corroborate the proposition. It can be shown 
 how rapidly the business of different offices has grown under the system, and when such 
 growth is vastly greater than the growth of population, we may assume that it is owing to 
 the system, more or less. 
 
 Ten years ago the letters distributed at Chicago amounted to, in round numbers, six 
 and half millions per annum. That was the fourth year of the existence of the system in 
 that city. Four years later that is, in 1872 the letters distributed had grown to more 
 than double ; that is, they reached the number of thirteen millions five hundred thousand.
 
 18 . 
 
 In 1876 they were three times as great, being nearly twenty millions. And yet, sir, it 
 that time the population has not increased over 40 per cent., and the last four years havs 
 been years of disaster and ruin. 
 
 In 1868 Cincinnati delivered two and a half millions of letters ; in 1872, five millions; 
 in 1876, neaily eight millions. Boston has increased steadily from four millions to four 
 teen millions; New York, from nineteen millions to fifty-five millions ; Philadelphia, fron 
 ten millions to thirty two millions that is, from 1868 to 1876, a period of eight year. 
 The increase in all other cities has been at a like pace, and in them all steadily from yetr 
 to year. And I understand from 1876 to 1878 the progression has been of a like characte . 
 
 In 1870 the Government expended on the carrier system, over and above local receipt , 
 about $600,000 ; in 1872, $400,000; in 1873, $300,000; in 1874, $191,000; in 1875, te 
 balance shifted to the other side of the sheet and showed a profit of about $60,000 ; in 187 , 
 of $84,000; in 1877, of over $300,000; and this year it is estimated there will be a clejir 
 profit of nearly $600,000. In 1870, when Government lost by the system, there were 1,352 
 carriers. In 1875, when the balance was turned, there were 2,195 carriers, and in 1$7 
 there were 2,265. 
 
 Thus have the postal receipts over and above the expenses steadily increased, and'in- 
 creased as the carrier facilities have been increased. Sir, I read somewhere that in England 
 the great reduction of postage from a shilling to finally a penny was started from ai in- 
 cident brought to the notice of the gentleman who brought about the reduction. One day 
 he saw a servant girl take a letter from a postman and examine it, and turn it up and iown, 
 and finally return it with a tear in her eye and the remark on her lips, that she knew it 
 was from her brother but she had not the shilling to pay for it. The gentleman out ot 
 charity paid the shilling, and gave the letter to the girl, and when he observed she showed 
 no pleasure in receiving it, he questioned her closely and learned that there was nothing in 
 the letter, but there were some marks on the outside which told her that her brother was 
 well ; that they corresponded in that way and saved postage. He resolved then to work to 
 reduce postage and succeeded, and to-day by charging a penny a letter, with free delivery 
 everywhere, even in parts of the country, the post-office brings revenue into the British 
 treasury. 
 
 Sir, Government forbids to private parties the right to carry mails ; it demands and 
 holds for itself the right ; it should not attempt to make the right and practice a source of 
 revenue ; it should, however, make it as nearly self-sustaining as can be consistent with 
 efficiency. 
 
 Now, I hold it should give to each locality all the facilities demanded by it which 
 come within the receipts of that particular locality; for if one State pays into the Treasury 
 a million through its postage and expends only a half million, then a half million of that 
 revenue is a tax upon the people of that State for the benefit of another State ; and, as far 
 as that State is concerned, the post-office is used as a source of revenue. But as postage is 
 and should be uniform, then the Government should at least extend to the State paying this 
 forced revenue all the facilities its people demand within the amount of revenue paid by it. 
 
 Therefore, Mr. Speaker, I think Congress should by all means listen to the prayer of 
 the people of our cities, and give to the carriers such compensation as will insure their 
 being first-class men, men who are worthy of the great trust reposed in them. They have 
 to give the best days of their lives to the service. No old man can fill the position. Few 
 men of over forty-five years of age are equal to the work. Young and active men must fill 
 the positions. They can barely live on their pay, and have nothing to lay by for the rainy 
 day when the infirmities brought on by their exposed lives shall force them to quit the ser- 
 vice. In England, when worn out, they are promoted to some other position which they 
 can fill, and finally, when unable to perform any service, they are the recipients of a pen- 
 sion which enables them to spend at least a comfortable old age. 
 
 Twenty-two hundred and sixty-five earnest, honest and faithful of your fellow-citizens 
 are watching your action on this bill. You may safely ?ay that three other persons are 
 dependent on each of these carriers for their daily bread. Therefore about ten thousand 
 people are watching our action in this matter. I earnestly appeal to the House to give an 
 answer which will carry gladness to so many of our fellow-citizens; and when we shall 
 have done so, then when the quick tread of the carrier approaches our door and his sharp 
 double-pull sounds the bell, we will remember with pleasure the vote we cast for his benefit.
 
 Heads I win, tails you lose." 
 
 SPEECH OP 
 
 HON. C. H. HARRISON 
 
 The House having under consideration the claims of James B. Belford and Thomas M. Patter- 
 son to the office of Represent ative to the Forty-fifth Congress of the United States from the State 
 of Colorado. 
 
 Mr. SPEAKER : Gentlemen around me seem to be rather averse to putting off this mat- 
 ter. As we want to get at the work of the country, and gentlemen on the other side are 
 exceedingly anxious that the "aching void" from Colorado should be filled as early as 
 possible, I think we had better proceed with the discussion. 
 
 Mr. Speaker, I shall have to very my remarks somewhat from what I had intended, 
 owing to the peculiar effect of the late speech of the gentleman from Michigan, [Mr. 
 CONQBR.] He got the muscles of cachination on the republican side of this House so 
 thoroughly in motion, that I feel it will be incumbent on me to restore them to something 
 of the solemnity fitting for this important question. To do this I shall call the attention of 
 the House to a remarkable order of brotherhood existing in the highly polished city which 
 I have the honor in part to represent on this floor. The rites or ceremonies of this brother- 
 hood had as forerunner or type, an older and simpler ceremony, which has gone beyond the 
 Missouri Kiver, beyond the rolling plains of Kansas, and is now in full vigor in the new- 
 fledged State of Colorado. 
 
 This order was organized for the purpose of enlightening the people of the rural dis- 
 tricts suburban to Chicago and lying within a radius of five or six hundred miles. Like all 
 pioneers of great ideas, this brotherhood is frowned upon by narrow-minded and fanatic 
 police, and is compelled to hold its meetings in secluded places, in the back room of some 
 palatial edifice, entered through a long, narrow passage but dimly lighted, for too much 
 light is not conducive to the solemn feelings necessary to the novice. "When the unsophist- 
 icated denizen of the surrounding villages comes to my town from Saint Louis, Milwaukee, 
 Louisville, Cincinnati, or Detroit, at once a member of the brotherhood takes charge of 
 this innocent person, carries him into the sanctum sanctorum of the brotherhood, and There 
 certain rites are performed. I never was in one of those places myself. My information 
 comes from one of the gentlemen living in one of those villages, and as he is a modest man 
 I shall not allude to him more particularly. He informs me, however, that over the door 
 of the sanctum sanctorum is a cabalistic sign which interpreted readeth "We take in strang- 
 ers, for thus we put angels* into our pockets." This rite was founded upon an older rite, 
 now in vogue in Colorado, and therefore I am compelled to dwell upon it. My informant 
 tells me that in the room there is a long table covered with green-cloth, baize I think it is 
 called there, around which the brotherhood sit with the novice and perform the rites with 
 a sort of counter made of ivory, so far as the brotherhood is concerned ; but these friends 
 from Saint Louis and other places in that locality are compelled to use a piece of metal, the 
 half of the "dollar of the fathers," which was "Hooped" out of existence by the chairman 
 of the Committee on Coins and Coinage of the Forty-third Congress and now in derision is 
 called by the Plutarch "coin-tokens," but which is really the poor man's money. 
 
 The gentlemen from Louisville and Cincinnati use a piece of paper, in the right lower 
 corner of which is a hieroglyphic character looking as if it were made by the track of a 
 fishing-worm in which a boy had stuck a pin. This, sir, was called "money" by the soldier 
 when he was fighting for our country ; but now by the Plutarch of the East is pronounced 
 "a degraded, irredeemable promise to pay." When one comes from the haut ton of New 
 York from that American Rialto, Wall street he uses a golden disk, an eagle, which by 
 the alchemy of republican legislation is precipitated from the sweat of poor men's brows, 
 to be turned into interest paid upon rich men's bonds. 
 
 They go through certain performances there, utter certain weird incantations, and then 
 tome of the brotherhood suddenly call out, "Kenol" [Laughter.] Immediately thereafter 
 the brotherhood rake in the various counters, and the innocent gentlemen from Saint Louis 
 and Cincinnati rake out. [Renewed laughter.] 
 
 That, sir, is the end of the first lesson, and the second lesson is like unto the first, and 
 
 * Angels, an old English coin.
 
 20 
 
 the third is like unto the first and second, and the remainder are like unto these three, until 
 the "wee short hour ayont the twal" is reached, when our rural friend goes home a lighter 
 and I hope a wiser man. [Laughter.] 
 
 The type of this ceremony, Mr. Speaker, was much older, one which has been banished 
 beyond the Missouri, beyond the fertile plains of Kansas, and to the borders of civilization 
 in Colorado. It is the old ceremony of ''Heads I win and tails you lose." If you will only 
 say it fast it is the fairest of all propositions, but to say it slowly robs it a little of its virg- 
 inal purity. "Heads I win, tails you lose" was the game last fall played by the republican 
 party out in Colorado. [Laughter"] They issued through the secretary of state election 
 notices directed to the various sheriffs of the twenty-six counties of Colorado, that they 
 should issue proclamations for election of various officers, and among others for one .Repres- 
 entative of the Forty-fourth Congress of the United States of America, to be held on the 
 3d day of October, 1876. That, sir, was issued on the 31st day of August. After a half 
 month had passed, this self-same secretary of state, Mr. Taffe, issued another election notice 
 to all the sheriffs of all the counties of Colorado, directing that they should issue proclama- 
 tions for the election of one Representative to the Forty-fifth Congress of the United States 
 of America, to be held on the 7th of November. 
 
 This was all fair enough, but the republican committee met in some secluded place and 
 concluded they would play the game of " Heads I win, tails you lose." They said they 
 would put Mr. Belford's name upon a ticket to be voted for upon the 3d of October, both 
 for the Forty-fourth and Forty-fifth Congresses ; that it should be : 
 
 James B. Belford for the unexpired term of the Forty-fourth Congress. 
 James B. Belford, Representative for the Forty-fifth Congress. 
 
 If carried by the great excitement which then existed during the presidential election 
 and Mr. Belford should be elected, why of course it was "heads I win," but if Mr. Belford 
 should not be elected they had a chance of calling for tails in November. That was the 
 game which was played out there. 
 
 Let us see how they played it. This ticket with the name on for both Congresses was 
 not known of until five days before the election. The gentleman who was running on the 
 democratic side was away out in the mountains of Colorado enlightening the people there 
 concerning the dangers of republicanism, and impressing upon them the truth of the fact 
 that in the democratic party was the place where honest men and poor men would be secure 
 in their rights. Not until two days before the election, if I am informed rightly, did this 
 gentleman know the fact that the tickets were being so formed. The democracy at first led 
 astray and partially entering into this game of "Heads I win, tails you lose" allowed Mr. 
 Patterson's name to go on this ticket in a few instances. But in several counties no ballot 
 had his name for the Forty-fifth Congress. Immediately after the election, finding that Mr. 
 Belford had been elected, the republicans declared it was all unnecessary to have another 
 election and that they would count in Mr. Belford for both Congresses. And that celebrated 
 scion of the American Constitution the returning board did count in Mr. Belford. 
 
 Mr. DOUGLAS. Will the gentleman allow me to ask him a question ? 
 
 Mr. HARRISON. Just wait until I get through and 1 will answer a dozen questions. 
 [Laughter.] 
 
 They counted Mr. Belford in. The republican committee ordered that republicans 
 should not attend the election on the 7th day of November for the election of one Repre- 
 sentative to the Forty-fifth Congress, as they had been satisfied with the great success they 
 had won in October. They stood very much in dread lest that reserve general, which some- 
 times comes in, called general Apathy, should defeat them in the November election. The 
 republican party made one great mistake, however. They forgot that this copper which 
 they had flipped would fall into this House [laughter] and we would determine whether 
 there were any heads or tails to it. We propose to send it to a committee to be examined, 
 where it will be rightfully decided. We are not like my friend from Ohio [Mr. GARFIKLD] 
 who is to follow me, who last year, when the republican party held four kings and a knave 
 and a bowie-knife, whispered in our ears, "If you had the cards would you not play them?" 
 [Laughter.] We have them, Mr. Speaker, but we intend to play them fairly. We want 
 nothing but justice ; we intend to use nothing but the face of a straight pack of cards ; no 
 jugglery in the matter. We have no knave sitting at the other end of the avenue, nor have 
 we a bowie-knife over there on Arsenal Hill. [Laughter.] 
 
 Now, Mr. Speaker, I would not think it necessary for me to make an argument on this 
 point, for the gentleman who has preceded me [Mr. CHALMERS] has touched every single 
 point that was necessary and far more ably than I could, but for the fact that my republican 
 friends over in the territories* there, I am informed, some of them did not hear him and I 
 intend to speak loud enough so that they shall hear me. They never read a democratic 
 speech, but they are sometimes forced to hear one. 
 
 Outside seats.
 
 21 
 
 The Constitution of the United States says that every second year there shall be chosen 
 members of the Bouse of Kepresentatives. No legislative enactment which renders nugatory 
 or in any way contravenes that fundamental law of the land is valid. That can not be 
 controverted. 
 
 The Constitution of the United States says, also, that the Legislatures of the States 
 shall decide the places, time, and manner of holding elections ; but that the Congress of 
 the United States may change or alter such State regulations. 
 
 Now, sir, the Congress of the United States has changed the time of holding the 
 elections in most of the States of the Union, and did fix by a positive law that the mem- 
 bers of the Forty-fifth Congress of the United States should be voted for in the States of 
 this land on the 7th day of last November, except in those States where to have such a 
 vote, it would be necessary to change or alter the constitution. 
 
 My friend from Ohio [Mr. GARFIELD] I think will argue, judging from a remark 
 of his which I will take the liberty of presuming will somewhat foreshadow his speech 
 he will argue that the constitution of Colorado would have to be changed to permit 
 the 7th day of last November to be the day on which the election should be held. He 
 will hold that the State, though admitted last year, comes with all the powers of a State 
 into the free status of any one, even of the original thirteen, and that if it requires the 
 change of its constitution, it would be impossible, according to this amendment of the 
 twenty-fifth section of the Eevised Statutes, to hold an election in November. Now, 
 sir, I hold that a State coming into the Union after the passage of the twenty-fifth 
 section of the Eevised Statutes must conform all of its action to that law. That law, 
 sir, was authorized by the Constitution of the United States and is paramount to the 
 action of the laws of any State. If it could be held otherwise, then any State in this 
 Union could nullify the law of the land as passed by Congress by resolving itself into 
 its original condition and forming a constitution which would not admit of the 7th of 
 November being the day of election. I hardly think that this House will decide that 
 the gentleman is correct or that a State could do so revolutionary a thing. 
 
 Now, sir, how was Mr. Belford elected to the Forty-fourth Congress ? Under the 
 forty-fourth section of article 5 of the constituton of Colorado which said on the 3d of 
 October, 1876, one Kepresentative to the Congress of the United States should be elected 
 from the State at large at the first election under this constitution, "and thereafter at such 
 times and places and in such manner as may be prescribed by law." What authority had the 
 State for passing that article ? The authority given it by the enabling act which authorized 
 Colorado to come into the galaxy of States. That enabling act said that until the next gen- 
 eral census one Representative to the Congress of the United States, together with governor, 
 &c., should be elected on such day as the constitutional convention should prescribe. The 
 gentlemen on the other side of this House claim, sir, that until the census of 1880 that 
 constitutional convention had the authority to fix under that clause the day when elections 
 were to be held until 1880. But, sir, let us read that, and read it so as to make it read sense, 
 so as to make it conform to the Constitution of the United States, so as to make it conform 
 to the laws of the land ; because it is a prime consideration in interpreting any statute that 
 you should make it correspond sufficiently with the organic laws of the land as not to violate 
 them, and that it shall not repeal any law unless the very words of repeal are in it, or it is 
 inconsistent by its terms with prior laws, and that it conform to reason or sense. "Until the 
 next general census there shall be one Kepresentative 
 
 That member of the clause refers entirely to the number of Representatives, and was 
 not intended as a part of the sentence permitting the convention to fix a day for the election. 
 For why did Congress refer to the census of 1880 ? Has the census anything to do with the 
 day on which an election shall be held? Does the fact that Colorado has 8 hundred thou- 
 sand or a million voters have anything to do with the propriety of the convention fixing 
 the day on which an election shall be held? Congress was not making a piece of mean- 
 ingless legislstion was not legislating without some reason. There was a design under 
 every word it is said here. And there was a good reason why Colorado should have but 
 one Representative till 1880, but not sufficient for a larger number of Representatives. 
 Until 1880 one Representative is the number to be elected. But, sir, if you interpret it 
 according to the republican interpretation on this floor, then you must read it so as to make 
 Congress legislate on subjects it had no right to touch. It says that on that day other 
 officers, the governor of the State and other State officers, shall be voted for. What right 
 had Congress to interfere with a sovereign State to declare when and how it should vote 
 for its governor or other officers ? Congress has no more to do with fixing the day on 
 which the governor of Colorado should be voted for than it has with fixing the day on 
 which the Dominion of Ontario shall vote for its officers. It is sovereign. 
 
 Therefore we must presume that Congress never intended to utter a brutum fulmen. It 
 never intended to utter here a sentence that it had no right to promulge. The State was put 
 upon its legs by the election of one Representative and by the election of its various officers.
 
 22 
 
 One single election was sufficient for that ; and that was what Congress intended, and that 
 was done on the 3d day of October when the State officers and the member of the Forty- 
 fourth Congress was elected. If we go further and interpret it according to the republican 
 interpretation, then Congress was violating the Constitution of the United States ; for if 
 you follow out their interpretation, then it declared that, on a day to be fixed by the 
 convention, one Representative i. e. one member should be elected to hold until 1880. 
 But the Constitution of the United States says that members of this house shall be voted for 
 every second year. Therefore the whole sentence containing the words "until the census of 
 1880" applies exclusively to the number of members who were to sit on this floor from 
 Colorado. And the remainder of the section authorized the convention to fix the day 
 not days but the day on which that one member and the State officers necessary to set the 
 State machine in motion should be elected. 
 
 But the gentlemen on the other side are deeply interested in this question and have 
 brought upon this floor and have spread upon the desk of each member of this House since 
 the discussion of this question commenced, the argument of a gentleman whom I am 
 forbidded by decorum to name ; brought here, as I have every right to suppose by the 
 consent of that gentleman ; a private document written as a private paper in a spirit of 
 noble self-abnegation, for he refused to take any pay for his counsel. I am forbidden by 
 decorum to call his name, but he comes in such questionable shape that I will call him the 
 Saint Jerome of the Green Mountains. We on this side of tte House knew the Saint 
 Jerome* of the Green Mountains. We have taken his measure and his gauge. He is an 
 astute politician, a wily statesman, a man who can play thimble-rig with the law as 
 cunningly as any prestidigitator ever did with my lady's thimble. 
 
 He is a man who can play "now you see it and now you don't" with perfect accuracy. 
 He is a man who can amuse an innocent inquirer after legal truth as cunningly as did his 
 great prototype amuse sweet Mother Eve from the bending bough of the primal apple-tree. 
 He is capable of ground and lofty tumbling. O, how he tumbled last winter -when over 
 yonder in that hall dedicated to the sublimest functions of the Eternal Jehovah, the 
 rendering of justice, he proved first that white was black, and then bleached it out and 
 proved that black was white ! In the case of that flowery land down South, the land where 
 
 The orange and citron is fairest of fruit 
 
 And the voice of the mocking-bird never is mute, 
 
 with one fell blow of his legal hammer he killed that veracious witness Mr. Aliunde, and 
 would not let the people of this land have the man for whom they had voted to be their 
 ruler. Then with one grand somersault, seventeen times turning while yet in the air, 
 when he found himself in the forest mazes of that far-off region 
 
 Where rolls the Oregon 
 
 And hears no sound save his own dashing, 
 
 he conjured up the ghost of Mr. Aliunde and with his aid tore into shreds the Constitution 
 of the land, and thrust through the crystal windows of the rear part of the Nation's 
 Executive Mansion a ruler whom the majority of the voters of the land had repudiated. 
 
 But, Mr. Speaker, let me say parenthetically, thank God ! that the man they thus 
 fraudulently put in, has acted like poor little Oliver Twist when he wag put through the 
 window for the purpose of opening the door for the thieves ; he has barred the door and 
 kept the thieves out. He obeys the will of the people, and if he will only listen to the 
 voice of 25,000 majority in Ohio, he will soon obey it fully and turn out the "lean Cassius" 
 at the head of the Treasury who is grinding down the poor man in the interest of the 
 bondholder and the plutocrat Sir, I thank God that he has one attribute of the American 
 statesman, a desire to obey the will of the people, and so long as he conducts this Govern- 
 ment on the principles of the great democratic party, as he has commenced doing, we will 
 help him and care not how "Tray, Blanche, Sweetheart, and all the little dogs" bark at 
 him from the other side of the House or from the other end of the Capitol. 
 
 Now, sir, this great legal prestidigitator, Saint Jerome, says : "Congress never having 
 undertaken to regulate the place or manner of electing a Kepresentatiye ; it seems obvious, 
 taking the facts in question all together, that it was the intention to leave the constitutional 
 convention to represent the State in that respect." Now you see it 1 O, it is wonderful ! 
 Now you see it I On a little way further he goes on to say that the election in November 
 was entirely nugatory because Congress leaving the manner of election undisturbed, it was 
 left where the constitution left it with the Legislature. And no legislature made provision 
 for a November election. Now you do not see it 1 O, how wily he is 1 He can prove that 
 black is white. The constitutional convention, according to Saint Jerome, had the power, 
 under the enabling act. to regulate the times, place, and manner of holding this election ; 
 
 * Senator Edmunds, of Vermont. The rules forbid members of one House to interfere with 
 matters before the other House.
 
 23 
 
 but the constitutional convention had not that power because the constitution fixed it in the 
 Legislature of the State 1 That is very profound. 
 
 But Saint Jerome and my friend from Maine, [Mr. HALE,] following after nature, 
 abhor a vacuum. They say it would be hard for that far-off State to be unrepresented on 
 this floor. O, what a difference it makes when the ox that has got that little wound in his 
 side is your ox or my ox. For six long years, over at the other side of this Capitol, one 
 great State of this Union, a State torn by faction, has gone unrepresented, and I never 
 heard that any letter was written privately and distributed publicly to aid that State to be 
 represented. 
 
 For twenty-three months and twenty-nine days in this House that great State was 
 worse than not represented, for it was misrepresented. My friends on the other side of the 
 House kept two men here for twenty-three months and twenty-nine days misrepresenting 
 the great State of Louisiana, and then at the last hour put in Mr. Sheridan and some one 
 else just in time to draw pay, but they had not been able to represent their State. They 
 drew double pay, $7,000 each, a year for not representing that State. It is better to have 
 a State misrepresented, according to gentlemen on the other side of the House, than to have 
 it not represented at all. We Democrats consider that no representation is better than mis- 
 representation. 
 
 Look, Mr. Speaker, at that old bird above your head ! The pelican of Louisiana ! I 
 have counted the little pelicans that are looking up to her for sustenance and support ; 
 forty-two in sight; and by the rules and laws of perspective there must be eighty-four upon 
 the other side. They were all misrepresented on this floor for twenty-three months and 
 twenty-nine days ; every single young pelican of them was misrepresented, and yet gentle- 
 men upon the other side of the House are horrified at a vacuum existing by this far-off State 
 not being allowed representation here. Sir, if they want representation we will give them 
 a representation that the people want. The people want Mr. Patterson here, and if they 
 insist upon the vacuum being filled we will put him in ; but we do not want to play the 
 eards simply because we hold them. We want to send the copper to be examined under a 
 microscope by the Committee of Elections, to see if it had a head and tail ; because we know 
 that where a metal has been deeply indented it may be polished down until its surface is 
 made as smooth as diamond powder will make it, yet when it is examined under the 
 microscope it will show bondings and twistings and perhaps letters below. Now we think 
 that there may be a chance that that copper may have an impression, and we want to give 
 Mr. Belford the benefit for it. If it has not, then let him stay out and let us put Mr. 
 Patterson in, and Colorado will be represented as we believe her people wish she should be. 
 The people will, we believe, be satisfied, and the republican party of the State will have n 
 right to complain. 
 
 What right had they to violate the laws of the land and the Constitution of the United 
 States? What right had they to elect a man on the 3d day of October when the law of 
 Congress had said that the election should be held on the 7th day of November ? What 
 right had they to violate the law by sending a man here who was not elected ? Ah ! they 
 had won by fraud once and they were afraid to trust the people. 
 
 Mr. Speaker, gentlemen get up here and say that Mr. Patterson was voted for in only 
 eleven counties. The fact is that twenty-three counties out of twenty-six in that State gave 
 full votes for Mr. Patterson ; but every republican sheriff in the republican counties refused 
 to make returns, while the sheriffs of the eleven democratic counties did make returns and 
 the canvass was made on those returns. If all the sheriffs had done their duty as they 
 should have done, Mr. Patterson would have received a large vote, even though there was 
 no contest, Mr. Belford not allowing his name to be used in November. 
 
 Sir, in 1875 there was an election in the first district of Illinois for Representative in 
 the Forty-third Congress. In consequence of the death of Mr. Kice a new election was 
 ordered, and Mr. Caulfield, the gentleman who had been elected for the Forty-fourth Con- 
 gress, ran for the unexpired term of the Forty-third Congress. Though the vote of that 
 district was over 20,000, Mr. Caulfield received only about 4,000 or 6,000 or 6,0001 forget 
 the precise vote, but think it was under these figures but a mere fraction of the total vote 
 was given to him because there was no opposition to him and the people did not turn out 
 to vote. 
 
 For the Forty-third Congress Mr. Hagans received 3,441 in West Virginia in a district 
 of 27,000 votes received them in August Eight of the eleven of the Committee of Elections 
 reported there was no valid election, yet the republican Congress admitted him. But now 
 they say the election in November for Mr. Patterson was a farce because only some four to 
 five thousand votes were cast. 
 
 Why, sir, the voters of the republican party were directed by the chairman of the cen- 
 tral committee of that state not to vote at the election of the 7th of November, and but a 
 few democrats, comparatively speaking, came to the polls and voted for Mr. Patterson, be- 
 cause it was necessary for only a few to vote.
 
 24 
 
 Let us send this whole thing where in fairness it ought to go; let us send it to a com- 
 mittee. We find here how unfit this House is to hear testimony. The gentleman from 
 Michigan [Mr. CONGER] the other day stated as facts that which the gentleman from Ohio 
 [Mr. SOUTHARD] positively contradicted. Whom are we to believe? Whose word are we 
 to take ? We will be certain not to believe that side ; and although they ought to believe 
 this, I fear that in their prejudices they will not. We want this case sent where the testi- 
 mony can be weighed, where the law can be collated, so that when a report is made by the 
 proper committee we can vote upon the subject intelligently. That committee is the Com- 
 mittee of Elections ; and I promise gentlemen on the other side that when that committee 
 reports here, this side of the House will vote as honest men, and not as partisans; that we 
 will not follow in the wake which they have made for so many years.
 
 SPEECH OF 
 
 HON. CARTER H. HARRISON, 
 
 ON THE USE OF MILITARY AT ELECTIONS, 
 
 Delivered May 23, 1878. 
 
 Mr. Chairman, as showing a reason why the Army should be increased from twenty 
 to twenty-five thousand enlisted men, the Gentleman from Ohio [Mr. GARFIKLD] yesterday 
 sent to the Clerk's desk to be read a telegram from Governor Williams, of Indiana, asking 
 assistance from the President of the United States. When that telegram was read it created 
 on the other side of the House considerable merriment. That side of the House is composed 
 largely this year of new men. They were unacquainted with the character of "old Blue 
 Jeans." They did not know he was a man of economy. They were forgetful, or never 
 heard, that last year he refused to give to the gentlemen the right to drink lemonade at the 
 expense of the United States. [Laughter.] They forgot, sir, on all subjects he was an 
 economist ; one who had risen from the plow to the governorship of Indiana, as one of the 
 great men of my State rose from a rail-splitter to be President of the United States. Mr. 
 Williams has been, for a number of years, seeing at Indianapolis a lot of blue-coated men, 
 and he had never thoroughly comprehended for what purpose they were there. He at once 
 discovered he might utilize them ; the Government was paying for them, and as a matter 
 of economy he simply asked they might hand out the arms from the arsenal to the police 
 and militia which he as governor was calling out. There was only a small squad of soldiers 
 at Indianapolis in charge of the arsenal. He wished the arms to arm the militia with. He 
 had men enough to call out, but had no arms. He did not ask for soldiers ; he asked simply 
 for assistance to get arms, for the arms that were there. 
 
 Now, Mr. Chairman, let me contrast that telegram of Governor Williams with the 
 action of a republican governor in the State of Florida in November, 1876. I happened to 
 be a member of a special committee directed by this House in the Forty-fourth Congress to 
 inquire into the uso of United States troops in connection with the election in Florida and 
 South Carolina. Governor Stearns appeared before us. Let me read the testimony : 
 
 WASHINGTON, D. C., February 16, 1877. 
 M.S. STKABNS sworn and examined. 
 
 By Mr. HARRISON : 
 
 Question. State your residence and official position. 
 
 Answer. I reside in Quincy, Florida. I was governor of the State of Florida for the last three 
 years until the 2d of January last. 
 
 Q. Were you in Florida during the months of August, September, October, November, and 
 December last ? 
 
 A. I was, sir. 
 
 Q Do you know whether there were any United States troops stationed in Florida during any 
 of these months ? 
 
 A. Yes, sir ; there were. 
 
 Q. Regularly stationed there ? 
 
 A. Yes, sir; there were troops regularly stationed in Florida at several points. At Pensacola, 
 Saint Augustine, and at the fortifications at Key West. 
 
 Q Were United States troops stationed anywhere else in Florida than at those regular points 
 which you have just named, permanently or temporarily ? 
 
 A. There were detachments at several points in the State in the month of November. 
 
 Q. What do you mean by detachments ; detachments from the troops regularly stationed at 
 the polls ? 
 
 A. Yes, sir. These bodies of troops were scattered somewhat over the State from these places 
 during the month of November. 
 
 Q Were there any troops stationed there during those months not from those regular perma- 
 nent forts ? 
 
 A. Yes, sir. About the 12th or 13th of November two hundred nited States soldiers arrived at 
 Tallahassee, the capital of the State, from Atlanta, Georgia. 
 
 Q Under whose command were these troops ? 
 
 A. Under the command of General Kuger, I think. 
 
 Q. Are you aware of the circumstances that caused these troops to be sent there ? 
 
 A. I am not aware unless it was the general political excitement at that time at Tallahassee 
 and in the State. 
 
 Q. What was the nature of the general excitement ? 
 
 A- About that time there were some demonstrations of violence in the State, such as the 
 tearing up the track ot a railroad, burning two or three bridges, and cutting the telegraph line. 
 These were the outward demonstrations, with a good deal of public excitement. 
 
 Q. Were these acts done publicly ? 
 
 A. No, sir ; not publicly. 
 
 Q Were they done by organized bands of men ? 
 
 A. 1 cannot say.
 
 26 
 
 Q Have you any information that those demonstrations against the railroads and bridges 
 were by organizations? 
 A. No, sir. 
 
 Q. Were they done at night or by day ? 
 A. At night. 
 
 Q. Were they acts of such character as would require a very large number of men, or might a 
 few men have committed them ? 
 
 A. I am unable to say, but it looked like a concert of action at that time. 
 
 Q. How many bridges were burned by one or two or three men, or would it amount to an 
 insurrectionary act ? 
 
 A. 1 am not able to say. I think it probable they might have been so done. 
 Q. How much of the railroad track was torn up ? 
 
 A. I am unable to say, as I did not visit the place where the destruction occurred. 
 Q. As governor, you had of course authentic information as to the character of those acts. 
 Was it that here and there a tie and a rail were torn, or was it long strips of road that were torn up? 
 A. No very long strips. The most damage was to these bridges, and they were not large bridges 
 that were burned. In the other places a rail or two was taken up anu the telegraph line cut, some- 
 times three or four places cut down. 
 
 Q. A boy could cut a telegraph pole, I suppose ? 
 A. I do not know. 
 
 Q. Were those acts of such a character as that you, as governor of the State or as the sheriff of 
 the county, oouid not control ihem ? Did you first try to control them through the civil officers of 
 the law ? 
 
 A. They came upon us so suddenly that there was no time to take any particular action. 
 Q. Then you did not attempt it ? 
 
 A. No, sir, not specifically. Of course the officers were expected to protect property wherever 
 they knew of its being threatened. 
 
 Q. Were the officers forcibly resisted anywhere ? 
 
 A. No. sir ; not that I am aware of. Those acts were done secretly and by night. 
 Q. Nobody was arrested for them ? 
 A. Nobody was arrested for them that I am aware of. 
 Q; No person was attempted to be arrested for them ? 
 A. Not that am aware of, as the parties were unknown; 
 
 Q. The State of Florida during your administration has been an exceedingly quiet and peace- 
 able State, has it not ? 
 
 A- Yes, sir ; generally. 
 Q. And has been exceedingly prosperous ? 
 A. Quite so. 
 
 Q. Order has reigned generally throughout the State during your administration. 
 A. Yes, sir. 
 
 Q. Was there not, any time during the last several months, a time when any organization 
 existed in Florida which you, as governor of the State, attempted to quell or put down, and were 
 unable to do so ? 
 
 A. I do not know that anything actually occurred which we were unable to manage. 
 Q. When those troops under General Ruger came to Tallahassee, by whose orders were they 
 sent there ? 
 
 A. By the orders of Secretary of War, so far as I know. 
 Q. In answer to a request of yours as governor ? 
 A. No, sir ; I never made any formal requisition for troops. 
 
 Q. Did you or not send a dispatch about that time to Secretary Chandler in the city of New York? 
 A. I did. 
 
 [Here the hammer fell.] 
 
 Air. HEWITT, of Alabama, obtained the floor and yielded his time to Mr. HABRISON. 
 Mr. HARRISON. I continue to read : 
 Q. Advising troops to be sent there ? 
 A. YfS, t>ir. 
 
 Q. Where was Secretary Chandler when you sent that dispatch ? 
 A. It was sent to New York City. 
 Q. Where was it directed to ? 
 A. The Fifth Avenue Hotel, 1 think. 
 
 Q. Did you not direct it to the republican headquarters in New York City ? 
 A. Yes, sir. 
 
 Q. Had you received a dispatch from Secretary Chandler previous to that ? 
 A. I had 
 
 Q. What was the subject-matter of that dispatch ? 
 
 A. I received a dispatch from Secretary Chandler in reference to the election. 
 Q. Have you a copy of it with you? 
 A. I have not 
 
 Q. Do you know where it exists ? 
 
 A. I think it likely that I may have it in Florida among my private papers. 
 Q. You cannot get it here ? 
 A. No, sir. 
 
 Q! State as far as you can from recollection the substance of that dispatch. 
 A There was nothing in regard to troops in the dispatch from Secretary Chandler. 
 (Mr. Kasson objected to the examination as not within the scope of the inquiry intrusted to the 
 committee ) 
 
 Q. There was nothing in the dispatch from Secretary Chandler in reference to troops ? 
 A. No sir. 
 
 Q. Have you got a copy of your dispatch to him ? 
 A. I have not. 
 Q. Where is it? 
 
 A. I do not know ; I kept no copy. 
 Q. What was ihe substance of your dispatch ? 
 
 A. A dispatch by way of information as to the condition of affairs at that time. Speaking of 
 the indications of violence and that troops would be required to preserve the public peace, and 
 stating a case of a train being wrecked ihe night before, a telegraph line being cut, &c.
 
 27 
 
 Q. Do you mean that it was about a tie being broken which threw a train off? 
 
 A. Yes. 
 
 Q. Was that one of those cases which y m referred to before ? 
 
 A. It was one of the oases which i referred to before. There were on'y four persons reported 
 to have been seen at the time. 
 
 Q. Did you apprehend that there would be an insurrection in the State of Florida which you 
 could not quell ? 
 
 A. There was danger of difficulty among the people, such was the excitement at that time. 
 
 Q. You had the power, I suppose, as governor, to call out the militia at any time to protect the 
 public peace ? 
 
 A. Yes, sir ; but the militia was unorganized. We did not have a man under arms. 
 
 Q. When you felt that there was a danger of thU sort, did you think that Secretary Chandler in 
 New York was the proper person to apply to for troops ? Was it the impression in Florida that he 
 had the control of the troops ? 
 
 A. No, sir ; not at all. That dispatch was merely conveying information to him. 
 
 Q. Did you dispatch or write to the Secretary of War asking for troops ? 
 
 A. I did not. 
 
 Q. Did you to the President of the United States ? 
 
 A. No, sir. 
 
 Q. Did you give them any information whatever as to the condition of affairs in Florida ? 
 
 A. No, sir 
 
 Q. But you did to Secretary Chandler in New York City at the republican headquarters ? 
 
 A- Yes. As I happened to have occasion to telegraph him I gave him information as to the 
 condition of affairs 1 should have made application to the Secretary of War at that time for troops 
 had I not received a dispatch from him that troops had been ordered to Florida sufficient to preserve 
 the public peace. 
 
 Q. Had you not received from any person in Washington any information prior to that, that 
 if troops were needed in Florida they would be sent there ? 
 
 A. No, sir ; not any information at all. 
 
 Q. These two hundred troops were sent ? 
 
 A. Yes. 
 
 Q. Where were they stationed while in Florida ? 
 
 A. They were stationed on the edge of the city of Tallahassee in an open park there. 
 
 Q. Was there no intimation to you that you were able to protect the State yourself ? 
 
 A. No, sir ; I recollect nothing of the sort, 
 
 Q. Did thise gentlemen who suggested the sending for troops prior tj the election come to you 
 after the election with any suggestion ? 
 
 A. No, sir : they did not not on that subject at all. 
 
 Q. Was there at any time before and after the election such a condition of affairs there that 
 you felt you could not as governor of that State protect the State from any threatened violence or 
 insurrection ? 
 
 A. There were times when I apprehended very serious consequences. 
 
 Q. That is, you apprehended that you might be compelled to call out the militia ? 
 
 A. Yes, sir. 
 
 Q. But was there a time that you felt that with that militia you could not have quelled any 
 disturbance ? 
 
 A. There was no time that I was not willing to rely on my owu resources. 
 
 Q. And you gave no information to any of the Federal authorities at Washington that there 
 would be such a condition of affairs as you would be unable to quell ? j -. 
 
 A. 1 did not. 
 
 By Mr. 
 
 Q. Was there any act of violence in Tallahassee or in that country from tha day of election up 
 to the inauguration of Governor Drew ? 
 
 A. No, sir; 1 do not know that there was. 
 
 Q. Was there any act of violence ou the day of inauguration of Governor Drew ? 
 
 A. No, sir ; not any at all. 
 
 Q. How many white votes are there in the county of Leon ? 
 
 A. About eight hundred. 
 
 Q. How many colored voters ? 
 
 A. Something over three thousand. 
 
 By Mr. HARBISON : 
 
 y Then there are four times as many republican voters in that county as there are democrats ? 
 
 A. Yes, sir ; 1 think there are. 
 
 Q. You have spoken of some two hundred troops being sent to Tallahassee after the election ; 
 on what day did these troops arrive ? 
 
 A. They arrived about the 12th of November. 
 
 Q. Were these the troops that General Buger brought their from South Carolina ? 
 
 A. Yes, sir ; from South Carolina or Georgia. 
 
 Q. Do yon mean to say that these two hundred men comprehended all the United States troops 
 that were sent there ? 
 
 P! Were you aware that there were thirteen companies transferred there at that time by 
 General Kuger ? 
 
 A. No, sir ; I was informed that there were about two hundred men. 
 
 Q. You have no particular knowledge about the number? 
 
 A. No, sir. 
 
 Q. There was no military post at Tallahassee no barracks ? 
 
 A. No, sir. 
 
 Now, Mr. Chairman, Governor Stearns says Florida was peaceful There were n 
 disturbances and had been none ; no disturbances which could possibly be considered of an 
 insurrectionary character. Two or three bridges had been burned at night. He admits 
 they might have been burned by one, two, or three men; no one was seen. A few rails 
 had been torn up, a few ties removed, but in no place more than one or two. A few tele-
 
 28 
 
 graph-poles had been cut ; at one place three or four men had been seen running away . 
 Tallahassee was quiet and peaceable ; there had been no sort of disturbance there, and yet 
 on his advice to Secretary Chandler, chairman of the republican committee, by telegram 
 sent to republican headquarters at New York, for he had no correspondence with the Pre- 
 sident or Secretary of war, the Secretary of "War under the order of the President sent a- 
 large number of troops to Tallahassee, Florida. Sir, why were they sent there? Ah, sir, 
 the Army has strange uses in this free Republic. They wish it now to shoot down hungry 
 men next summer. In November, 1876, they were sent to Tallahassee to see that the vote& 
 were properly counted. General Grant wished a fair count. The republicans in the country 
 in which is Tallahassee, are as 4 to 1 to the democrats ; yet it required an army to see that 
 this inestimable right of free Americans should be preserved. And they did preserve it. 
 They protected the returning boards in their chaste performances, and Florida was cheated 
 out of its votes ; Drew was cheated out of his votes for governor. Afterward the courts 
 decreed that Drew was governor and decreed that the Tilden electors were elected, but the 
 great 8 to 7 commission in yonder room, dedicated to justice, refused to go behind the 
 certificates, and the Americans have a President whom they never elected a President 
 counted in counted in, and therefore a legal President, but not elected by the people. Sir, 
 the people of this country will not soon forget this use of the Army. They are not willing 
 to have an army either for the purpose of falsifying ballot-boxes or for shooting down 
 American laboring-men.
 
 SPEECH OF 
 
 HON. CARTER H. HARRISON, 
 
 DELIVERED JUNE 10, 1878, 
 ON THK APPROPRIATION FOR CHICAGO CUSTOM HOUSE. 
 
 I renew the amendments. Mr. Chairman, I have been in Congress only three sessions. 
 I came here with something of what my constituents thought business sense. I have at- 
 tempted to bring into legislation on this floor some of that sense. If I have failed I fear it 
 has been on account of the associations that I am thrown with. [Laughter.] 
 
 Now, sir, let us discuss this question as business men. In the city of Chicago there is 
 a building of great size and beauty going up. It may not have been necessary ; but it is 
 being built. The Government has spent $4,000,000 on that building. I have here a letter 
 from the Supervising Architect of the Treasury, stating that this building can be finished 
 in two years if the proper appropriations be made to finish it. Five hundred thousand dol- 
 lars a year for two years will finish this building, and another five hundred thousand or 
 thereabouts will be required for the approaches and for fitting it up ready for use. In other 
 words, $1,500,000 will finish the building and make it ready for use. The architect, Mr. 
 Hill, says in this letter that if Congress will give him money or keep him running full he 
 can have the building ready for occupancy by the end of the year 1879. 
 
 Now, if the House should appropriate $750,000 now and $750,000 next year, our post- 
 office and custom-house building would be in use by January 1, 1880, But if we appropri- 
 ate only $500,000 per annum, he tells us it will be at the end of 1880, before the Govern- 
 ment can have the use of the building. 
 
 Suppose Mr. Chairman, we cipher up the difference it will make to the Government by 
 finishing this in 1879 or 1880. For example, let us this year appropriate $750,000, and a 
 like amount next year. The interest on $750,000 to January, 1880, at 4 per cent., will be 
 $45,000 ; then the interest on $750,000 to be appropriated next year to January, 1880, will 
 be $15,000; in all $60,000. In other words, by making a sufficient appropriation to com- 
 plete within the two years, the Government will be out in interest $60,000, and will have 
 for use in 1880 a building which will have cost it, say, $5,500,000. But the building some 
 say has cost a million to much at this date. Let us even concede that it has cost $1,500,000 
 too much ; we will still have a building worth $4,000,000. The Government then will have 
 the use in 1880 of a four-million-dollar building ; at 4 per cent, rental it will be worth to the 
 Government $160,000; take from that the $60,000 interest to finish, and we have a clear 
 gain of $100,000. But we pay somewhere in the neighborhood of $50,000 a year rent. The 
 Architect says the Chicago architects and others employed cost about $8,700per annum. Add 
 these amounts together and we would have a clear saving for the year 1880 of $158,700. 
 
 But, sir, this bill only gives $300,000, which, with the $100,000 already given, makes 
 $400,000. Now, if we continue to give that amount each year, it will take four years to 
 complete it, and there will be a clear loss for 1881 of $158,700. Thus there will be lost for 
 those two years $317,400. 
 
 But there is another thing to be taken into calculation : that is, the insurance upon all 
 the business done in and the property contained in these rented buildings. For the people 
 are insurers. There can be no estimate made of the loss in the event of a destructive fire in 
 our post-office. One hundred and forty million pieces of mail matter pass through it in a 
 year, or four hundred thousand a day. In case <>t fire one-halt of this daily average would, 
 at least calculation, be lost. Now, who can tell what would be the loss to the people the 
 business people by a destruction of these two hundred thousand pieces of mail matter ? 
 
 "When the building shall be completed we will then have the benefit of the $4,000,000 
 already expended, and it will save over $50,000 a year now expended for rent. That is not 
 all; for the architect informs me that he pays to architects, watchmen, clerks, &c., $8,700 
 per annum merely for overlooking this building, while it is being completed. Yet the com- 
 mittee on Appropriations come in here proposing an appropriation of $300,000 a year. 
 
 Mr. SPAKKS rose. 
 
 Mr. HAKRISON. My colleague [Mr. SPARKS] may make all the speeches he wants 
 in his own time.
 
 30 
 
 Mr. SPARKS. Why does the gentleman say $300,000 when the amount is four hun- 
 dred thousand? The gentleman knows that in a deficiency bill passed some weeks ago we 
 appropriated $100,000, making, with the appropriation here proposed, $400,000 for the cus- 
 tom-house at Chicago, and that is nearly up to the amount of the estimate. Why does the 
 gentleman misrepresent the facts? 
 
 Mr. HARRISON. I hope this interruption will not be taken out of my time. I think 
 I should have additional time, especially when I am charged with misrepresentation. 
 
 Here is the bill. I hold it in my hand, and read "for the custom-house and post-office 
 in Chicago, $300,000." Has the committee concluded to amend their own act by giving 
 another $100,000 ? What right had I to suppose they would do so sensible a thing when 
 they have shown themselves deficient in business capacity. [Laughter.] 
 
 But I see what the gentleman alludes to. He refers to the $100,000 given in March, I 
 think. That was called an advance, but it was because the appropriation of last year had 
 run out, and the contracts could not be made even to carry on the work this summer. I 
 fought to have an additional $100,000 last year, but failed, and the result was this defici- 
 ency. 
 
 [Here the hammer fell.] 
 
 Mr. CAD WELL, of Tennessee, obtained the floor, and said: "I will yield my five 
 minutes to the gentleman from Illinois, [Mr. HARBISON.] 
 
 Mr. WRIGHT. I understand that I was to be recognized next. Am I to lose my 
 right to the floor ? 
 
 The CHAIRMAN. The gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. WRIGHT] is next on the 
 list, and will be recognized as soon as the gentleman from Illinois concludes. 
 
 Mr. WRIGHT. If 1 do not lose my right to the floor, I do not object to this arrange- 
 ment. 
 
 Mr. HARRISON. Now, Mr. Chairman, in the city of Chicago the Government pays 
 $50,000 a year for rent; $8,70C a year for salaries of those who are supervising the construc- 
 tion of this building ; over $2,500 a year for the protection and heating of the building. 
 This makes about $60 000 a year paid out by the Government in addition to the loss of in- 
 terest on the $4,000,000 that have already been expended upon the building. At present 
 the business of our custom-house and post-office is conducted in tinder-boxes, which if this 
 House continues in the line of legislation it has pursued, are constantly liable to go 
 up in smoke. We rent our custom-house and court-house, our post-office and bonded ware- 
 house. The latter are comparatively fire-proof, but the others were built for office build- 
 ings, and are as inflammable as any such buildings are. If they were to take fire, it would 
 be impossible to save anything except what would be in the vaults. 
 
 Chicago collects and pays into the Treasury over $9,000,000 of internal revenue. About 
 $2,000,000 of customs duties. In the post-ofilce $ i3,000,000 passes through the money-order 
 division. About sixty million pieces of matter passes through the hands of the carriers. 
 And in the mailing division about eighty million pieces pass. All of this vast business is 
 done in buildings utterly unfit for the business. 
 
 I am a business man, and I want this House to look at this question as a business ques- 
 tion. If we cannot spare from the Treasury $500,000 a year to complete this building, cap- 
 italists stand ready to advance the necessary money at 4 per cent, interest, which will be 
 $20,000 a year ; and as the Government is now spending $60,000 in rent and the salaries of 
 architects, &c., it would thus save $40,000 annually. Is not this plain common sense? 
 
 Gentlemen tell us that the Secretary of Treasury has informed us the Government will 
 fall short in its revenue. But the Secretary also asked for $500,000 for this building. It 
 you quote him for one purpose, do it also for the other. But, sir, I say to the Secretary of 
 the Treasury and tell him to stop spending 35,000,000 a year for the sinking fund to pay a 
 debt which ought to be left somewhat to our posterity to pay, but which he is using for re- 
 sumption. Are we going on here in our mistaken policy, and quote John Sherman, the 
 Secretary of the Treasury the man who has filled more poorhouses and more lunatic asy- 
 lums than any man in this generation ? Are we going to help him to keep the poor man 
 down and saddle upon the oppressed people the payment of a dept that ought to be left to 
 generations to come ? Why not suspend the whole sinking-fund business and employ the 
 honest and idle workingmen by putting them on these public buildings and finishing them 
 now ? If we could employ these idle men for the coming year confidence would revive, 
 prosperity would commence, and we would not have boards of trade petitioning us to give 
 a great standing Army to shoot down frenzied men, hungry Americans.
 
 31 
 
 The Supervising Architect of the Treasury Department says that with $1,000,000 the 
 building can be finished by the fall of 1879. Now, is it not economy to make such appropria- 
 tions as will finish this building promptly ? Are we to go before the people with the pre- 
 tentions of economy when we are in fact wasting the people's money ? One million dollars 
 will finish the building, $1,500,000 will get it ready for use. A business man would spend 
 the money and get the" use of the present idle pile, and the world would call him sagacious. 
 Why does not the Committee on Appropriations strive to merit the same encomium ? 
 
 Mr. Chairman, I regret that many of these buildings have been undertaken ; but they 
 have been. If you or I want to build a barn we would build it when labor was cheap, and 
 not when labor was high. If we needed it to-day we would build it to-day, if there were 
 men around us anxious to labor at cheap rates. We would not put it off" until next year, 
 when labor may be high. 
 
 Gentlemen may say the Government has not the money. We have all the money we 
 want. John Sherman is using it to force the Government into resumption and to plunge 
 the people deeper into bankruptcy than they are to-day. 
 
 [Here the hammer fell.]
 
 SPEECH OF 
 
 HON. CARTER H. HARRISON 
 
 ON REDUCTION OF TAX ON TOBACCO. 
 DELIVEKED JUNE 5, 1878. 
 
 MR. SPEAKER. Gentlemen are spending much breath on the question whether the tax on 
 tobacco comes out of the producer or out of the consumer. Sir, when a tax diminishes the 
 production of any article, then it necessarily falls entirely upon the producer. For supply 
 and demand must, all things being equal, keep even pace with each other. Consumption of 
 an article of no cost depends entirely upon the needs of the consumer, or upon his ability to 
 use it. As price is added to the article, the consumption will depend upon the ability of the 
 consumer to purchase. Inversely to the price does that ability exist. For it may become 
 so high that only the very rich can use. Therefore the higher the price the fewer who can 
 purchase. The tax is added to the price and consequently must diminish the consumption 
 in exact proportion to the increase of price. Now, if the ability to supply does not equal 
 the demand for consumption, the producer will be able to add to price until such price reaches 
 the point at which it checks consumption, and up to that point the whole price goes into 
 the pocket of the producer. If any part of the price up to that point is in the shape of tax, 
 then it must fall entirely upon the producer, for it lessens his profit pro tanto. 
 
 Sir, whether price of tobacco has reached that point or not, I have not now the time to 
 discuss. But it cannot be doubted that when an article is both produced and consumed in 
 the same country, it must in all instances fall upon both the producer and consumer. On 
 which it will fall the heaviest will be dependent upon the equitableness of the tax. 
 
 In England where no tobacco is produced, the tax falls entirely upon the consumer, and 
 if all consume, all bear the burden. In England, therefore, no injustice can be done any 
 one by the amount of the tax. For its excessiveness, which lessens consumption, falls upon 
 the foreign producer, which is of no concern to the Englishman. But here we produce as 
 well as consume. It is therefore our duty to limit the tax as much as possible so as to 
 press as lightly as possible upon production ; for production implies labor, and labor is the 
 poor man's capital. 
 
 Sir, until it is absolutely certain that the power of production is greater than the abil- 
 ity to consume, until that fact is fixed and acknowledged, we are ever in danger of treading 
 upon the rights of production when we lay a tax upon any article of American production. 
 
 But, sir, whether the tax comes out of the producer or out of the consumer is not so 
 much the question here, as whether or not it comes out of the American producer and the 
 American consumer. Every pound of taxed tobacco used in America adds to the burden 
 of our own people either as producer or as consumer. 
 
 Let us agree that the consumer pays the tax on tobacco. Then, sir, who pays the tax 
 on tobacco grown on American soil and consumed at home ? The great bulk of it comes 
 out of the poor, or out of those who are in moderate circumstances. The rich consume for- 
 eign-grown tobacco. The rich man inhales the fragrance of the weed grown in Cuba. He 
 pays its price and enjoys his luxury. He pays it out of his abundance. He lessens his ac- 
 cumulations by his extravagance, but he robs himself of nothing of absolute need to him. 
 He is able and he enjoys. 
 
 But every quid chewed by the poor man, every thimbleful which goes into his clay pipe, 
 deprives him of some other luxury, and takes from the little hoard which he could wish to 
 lay by for a rainy day. "But," saith the reformer, "he need not use this quid or his pipe 
 if he does not wish so to do. He is not compelled to use the one or the other." Ah ! Mr. 
 Speaker, this is good preaching. But, sir, it is idle talk. Why not say meat is not neces- 
 sary. The East Indian eats his handful of rice and lives and labors. Why cannot our la- 
 borer do likewise ? Sir, why? Because, sir, habit makes meat a necessity and habit makes 
 tobacco a necessity. Tobacco is to-day in use in more lands and by more men than is any 
 other produce of the soil. 
 
 If it be wrong, then go break the mold in which men are cast and fashion one of dif- 
 ferent pattern. But until that be done, let us deal with man as he has been fashioned by 
 his Great Creator. God fashioned man the last of His created beings. He made him, and
 
 33 
 
 then He looked upon him and pronounced him good. Our duty is to deal with him as he- 
 was fashioned. His appetite is in him. His appetite for some form of narcotic, for some 
 form of stimulant is so nearly universal that to deny its being natural is a species of Bob. 
 Ingersollism. 
 
 Sir, the taxes paid into the Federal Treasury come not from wealth. They come not 
 out of the strong boxes of wealth. They are levied upon men and women, upon muscles, 
 and the necessities of muscle. From customs it collects over $136,000,000. Every dollar of 
 that enormous sum comes out of consumption, out of consumption by individuals. Every- 
 thing a man wears or eats or smells or looks at pays a part of this tax Whether it comes 
 from abroad or is of home manufacture, its price is more or less regulated by tho custom 
 duty upon some article more or less allied to it. Sir, I said everything a man looks at pays 
 a tax, a custom tax. I was mistaken; he "spies his shadow in the sun" and pays nothing 
 for it. He spies it day by day, and sees it growing lank and more lank, and the sight is 
 free. Sweet privilege ! 
 
 Sir, a gentleman from the East said to me a few moments since, "It makes no differ- 
 ence to me whether you lower the tax on tobacco or not; I smoke havanas." Yes, there is 
 a class who care not how heavy this burden ; they smoke Havanas. 
 
 But the forty millions of internal revenue collected each year on tobacco come from the 
 masses, from the more or less poor. Sir, our people are suffering, out of labor, out of bread, 
 or, if working, they are working at very low wages. After a hard day's work in the hot 
 sun or in the drizzling rain your laborer goes to his room or to his little cottage ; he takes 
 his frugel meal ; he then sets him down on his rickety chair or hard bench, takes out hi& 
 short clay pipe, on which he has paid a manufacturer's duty, fills it with cheap tobacco on 
 which he has paid twenty-four cents tax, strikes a match which has paid a penny a box tax. 
 He slowly lights the weed ; he leans back and for a moment forgets life's weary cares. He 
 watches the spiral curls of smoke as they gracefully and lightly float off; he sees in them 
 the faces of friends in a far off land, whose features will never again appear to him in more 
 real fashion. He sees the young bride in her light robes of long years ago ; she is now a 
 busy and care-worn woman. He sees his first-born with its first infant smile around its 
 rosy mouth ; it now sleeps in a lowly grave unmarked and unflowered. These shadowy 
 forms float before him in the blue curls from his pipe. That smoke is paying a tax to Gov- 
 ernment. His very dreams are taxed. 
 
 Sir, it is the poor who pay this tax, and for his sake we ought to reduce it. It is believ- 
 ed that by so reducing it we will not lessen the revenues. In God's name, let us sometimes 
 try a few experiments for the poor man's sake. 
 
 Mr. LUTTRELL. Will the gentleman allow me to ask him one question ? 
 Mr. HARRISON. Yes, sir. 
 
 Mr. LUTTRELL. Do you believe it is right to tax the producer, the tiller of the 
 soil, or to tax any of his productions ? 
 
 Mr. HARRISON. Sir, I do not believe that if we could help it we should tax the 
 producer anywhere ; but we have got to tax something for revenue. 
 
 Mr. LUTTRELL. We had better encourage the producer. 
 
 Mr. HARRISON. Let us encourage the producer if we can. We will encourage him 
 when we lower the tax, if we do not reduce the revenue. 
 
 But that is not the question. By every single cent put upon tobacco, the common to- 
 bacco of this country, the tobacco that is used by the moderately well-off Americans, we do 
 levy a tax upon the labor of this country. They may say that tobacco is a luxury. Ay, sir, 
 it is a luxury that man cannot do without. It is a luxury that has become an absolute ne- 
 cessity. The judge upon the bench uses his cigar. The clergyman in the pulpit uses his 
 snuff. There is no class in our community, sir, that does not in one form or another use to- 
 bacco. There are individuals in classes who do not use it ; but there is not a class but does. 
 High and low I But it is the lowly who pay the bulk of the internal revenue collected on 
 tobacco. 
 
 It is said that whiskey and tobacco, being useless luxuries, should pay taxes. But, sir, 
 whenever a habit has grown upon a person, a habit that a man cannot shake off without 
 ridding himself of a part of his very nature, then that habit is as necessary to be gratified 
 as his appetite for food itself. 
 
 Last winter this House in a moment of enthusiasm voted that it was not expedient to 
 lessen the tax on spirits, and when it did this it fastened a burden upon the West. My own
 
 34 
 
 State pays $21,000,000 of internal revenue, a little less than one-fifth of all the internal rev- 
 enue collected by the Federal tax-gatherer. 
 
 Sir, Illinois freed from this tax could produce and would produce millions of dollars' 
 worth of alcohol alcohol which would go into manufacture and not down men's throats. 
 Now it scarcely produces any except for export trade. Alcohol we could make at twenty- 
 five cents a gallon. At that price it would go into the print factories, from which it is now 
 banished. It would go into burning-fluids, into varnishes, and thus help and feed laboring 
 men and women. But it is dried up at th still and the forces of earth pour up oils to be 
 turned into benzine to take the place of alcohol benzine, which requires but little labor to 
 produce and consequently feeds but few men in its manufacture. Murphy was brought 
 here just at the right time, and the innocent thought he came to reform the drunkard, when 
 I doubt not he was brought by your eastern high tariif men to frighten Congressmen into 
 their sectional act of loading down the West with the burden of taxation. 
 
 Sir, I am thankful they have no Murphy now to preach against tobacco, and the results 
 is we will to-day, I hope, take one burden from the poor man. You will help him and yet 
 you will not lose one dollar of revenue. You may lose a little until trade adjusts itself to 
 the new rate, but that will be only temporary. 
 
 Sir, this is the first Congress which for fifteen years has done anything for the poor man. 
 The great papers may rail at it ; they may say it has no leaders, no brains, and all that ; 
 but, sir, I will tell the pampered dailies that it has one leader, one great and mighty lead- 
 er, a leader whose interests we are trying to consult, whose will we are studying to obey. 
 
 Sir, that leader is the people.
 
 SPEECH OF 
 
 HON. CARTER H. HARRISON, 
 
 ON ENGINEERS and PILOTS, 
 
 JAN. 25, 1878, 
 The Steamboat and Navigation Bill being under consideration. 
 
 I offer the amendments which I send to the desk, to come in as a separate section. 
 The Clerk read as follows : 
 
 Sec. 38. That pilots and engineers of all steam- vessels who shall be licensed as such are hereby de- 
 clared officers of said vessels, and shall be subject to the same obligations and entitled to the same 
 privileges as other licensed officers of steam-vessels : and that none but citizens of the United States 
 or persons who shall be actually and bonafide residents of the United States shall be licensed as pilots 
 and engineers. 
 
 Mr. HAKBISON. The first part of this amendment may seem to be unnecessary. J"rom 
 reading the bill and the statues, one would think that pilots and engineers were sufficiently 
 recognized as officers. But in some way, I do not know how, in the courts it has been held 
 that they were not officers. During the Forty-fourth Congress an amendment almost the 
 same as this was offered by myself and was adopted on the steamboat and navigation bill ; 
 but it was lost in the senate. I have changed it, however, by adding a line. I have added 
 to that part of it which said that "none but citizens of the United States shall be licensed 
 pilots and engineers." That seemed to awaken some objection. Some thought it contained 
 a know-nothing principle, and, to obviate this seeming objections, a large number of pilots 
 and engineers in the various associations, which number over fifty thousand, have by reso- 
 lutions agreed to amend it so that it will make these licensed pilots and engineers bona fide 
 and actual residents of the United States. They will accept what they can get, although 
 it fall far below that which they wish. In accordance with this expression on the part of 
 these officers, I have added to the amendments passed in the Forty-fourth Congress the 
 words "or such persons as shall be bona fide and actual residents of the United States." 
 
 Sir, we are always legislating to protect property. Almost everything that the pilot 
 and engineer wears, his clothes, his boots, are protected in the manufacturer's hands. The 
 very steel of which his implements are made is protected, but protected in the hands of those 
 he purchases from. Here, sir, over fifty thousand men come up and petition this House to 
 protect poor men in the United States from being defrauded of their rights by foreigners 
 owing no allegiance to the General Government, not abiding or residing among us, not liv- 
 ing on our shores so as even to expend the salaries they obtain among our people. 
 
 A large number of honest, industrious men living in our lake ports are to-day idle, and 
 have been idle during the past summer, while Canadians living across the line, encouraged 
 by the greed of the ship-owners whom we have been aiding by exemption from liability by 
 the provisions of this bill, have been filling the places of our own people, taking from our 
 own people the very bread of their mouths, and are now spending it on their own shores. 
 Canada protects her pilots and engineers, but we are told we should not protect our own. 
 
 Sir, if there be a class of our citizens we should protect, it is the pilot and engineer of 
 steamboat. Their deeds of daring have been sung in song and eulogized in prose men who 
 rarely have deserted their posts in hours ofperil or those they are employed to protect. The 
 pilot stands at the helm in storm or fog as long as hope lasts. And often when hope has 
 seemed hopeless, he offers his breast to the storm, a very protection to the lives and freight 
 in the ship he is steering into port. 
 
 And deep down in the hold of the ship, shut out from the light of day, shut out from 
 the starlight at night, denied even the exhilaration of facing the storm-fiend buried in a 
 dungeon more dark than that of Chillon's prison 
 
 A double dungeon-wall and wave. 
 Have made-and like a living grave, 
 Below the surface of the lake 
 The dark vault lies 
 
 In these deep dungeons these daring engineers, cut off from sunlight or starlight, and even 
 from the storm's howl, standing with their hand upon the throttle, while the water is 
 creeping upon them inch by inch wading in their very graves rarely have deserted their 
 posts of honor and peril until the very fires are extinguished and steam refuses to yield to 
 their bidding 
 
 Sir, if any men in this land should be encouraged and protected it is the pilot and the 
 engineer.
 
 36 
 
 The Association of Pilots and Engineers, numbering some fifty thousand men, sent 
 resolutions here to the Forty-fourth Congress asking that a bill of this sort should be passed, 
 and it was passed as an amendment to this steamboat and navigation bill ; but it failed in 
 the Senate. It has not been put in this bill by the present Committee on Commerce; and 
 why I cannot tell, unless, Mr. Speaker, the owners of steamboats or ships wish to employ 
 men from abroad instead of helping our own people. 
 
 There can be no objection to this amendment, unless it may appear to be discriminating 
 against men coming into this country to make it their homes ; but this it does not do. This 
 pilot association ask that after the words "citizens of the United States" shall be added the 
 words "or such as shall be actual or bona fide residents of the United States." Now the 
 rights of men who come here from abroad and to become citizens of this country, and who 
 take out the papers necessary to become citizens of the United States, are not infringed 
 upon. We simply ask that citizens of the United States, spending their salaries among us, 
 be protected, and men across the Canadian border shall not be employed in their stead. 
 
 Mr. DUNNE LL. I ask that the amendments be again read. 
 
 The amendments were again read. 
 
 Mr. HARRISON. We have lately, by an award of arbitration, voted to give England 
 $5,000,000 and over; for what? To encourage our fishing-smacks and enable them to catch 
 minnows on the coast of Labrador and Nova Scotia for the purpose of breeding seamen for 
 the United States Navy. Sir, are we not to protect our citizens to enable them to become 
 seamen here, and especially when it can be done at no cost ? 
 
 What class of seamen are more valuable than pilots and engineers ? You say we must 
 not discriminate between foreigners and native citizens. I do not discriminate ; I simply 
 ask that when a man comes to America he may be* naturalized and then be protected in all 
 his rights ; and when he comes here and declares his intentions to become a citizen he has all 
 his rights ; but I assert that he should not have theTight, until he has so declared his inten- 
 tion or has chosen his home among us, to take the position in our American service of pilot 
 and engineer, and thus deprive American citizens from being educated into seamen necessa- 
 ry to protect us in time of danger. It is no discrimination. We do not want to encourage 
 foreigners to run our ships ; we want to encourage our own people. I do not care whether 
 they are citizens or not, if they come to earn their bread and take up their abode with us ; 
 but we know that along the lines of the lakes and rivers bordering on Canada are hundreds 
 and hundreds of idle engineers and pilots. Their places are taken to-day by Canadians who 
 owe us no allegiance, spend no money with us, never protect us in time of danger, and we 
 give them the right to be pilots and engineers, and this to the direct injury of our own 
 people, simply because men living under a cheaper government and under circumstances 
 in which our people cannot live are allowed to underbid them. 
 
 We have exemptions exempting owners from all sorts of liabilities. We make the pilots 
 and engineers liable for everything, for every act of neglect or of willful misconduct. 
 Give him this protection, and thus you make good engineers and good pilots. I do not think 
 any person can object tp that as discriminating against persons of any country. I have yet 
 become so loving to mankind that I am willing to legislate for other people. I want to 
 legislate for our own people, whether they be native-born or have come to us from their 
 own free choice.
 
 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS-URBANA 
 
 C001 
 
 3 4 6 E E 4 C H H 2 E 4 S S ON ILLINOIS AND MICHIGAN CANAL 
 
 025309599