tified, like coffee, or their consumption may be safely impeded, like di3tilled spirits or fermented liquors or tobacco, or they are luxuries, like wines, silks and diamonds." He even looks forward to the time when, after the removal of what he calls the war taxes on raw material, we shall live in the elysium of supplying all our expenditures from the taxes on "whisky, tobacco, and beer," though perhaps we may be driven back to get "ten millions of revenue from two cents a pound on coffee and half as much from tea." -Senator DAWES, of Massachusetts, speech, December 13, 1886. Cleveland compared to other Presidents on the tariff issue. No. 110.-Mr. Chairman, every period of protection in the history of our country has given it prosperity; every era of tariff for revenue has brought to it disaster. President Cleveland's message is cited in this debate as worthy of our serious consideration, as a text from the political gospel from which to exhort. Let me cite you from the messages of other Presidents. Likely they were not as profound students of the science of political economy as is the present Executive, but they certainly were as ardent in their love of country and as devoted to its interests. President Jackson in his message of December 4, 1832, said: "Our country presents on every side marks of prosperity and happiness, unequaled, perhaps, in any other portion of the world. If we fully appreciate our comparative condition, existing causes of discontent will appear unworthy of attention, and with hearts of thankfulness to that Divine Being who has filled our cup of prosperity, we shall feel our resolution strengthened to preserve and hand down to posterity that liberty and that union which we have received from our fathers, and which constitute the source and shield of all our blessings. * * * The report which the Secretary of the Treasury will in due time lay before you will exhibit the national finances in a highly prosperous state." Remember, if you please, Mr. Chairman, that this epitome was written by a Democratic President, "of Jeffersonian simplicity," and during the highest protection period of our history, to that date. After that came the "revenue only tariff," the compromise tariff, from 1833 to 1842. By virtue of it our industries were paralyzed, our capital unemployed, our labor idle. Our importers were busy, and foreign manufacturers supplied our markets. Our own establishments for manufacturing were closed and our consumers paid higher for necessities than ever before. Our people tasted of the very dregs of the bitter cup of "revenue reform." The burden was greater than they could bear, and they re-enacted the protective policy in 1842. This is what President Polk said of the situation under that enactment. I read from his message of December 8, 1846: "Since your last session no afflicting dispensation has visited our country; general good health has prevailed; abundance has crowned the toil of the husbandman; and labor in all its branches is receiving an ample reward, while education, science, and the arts are rapidly enlarging the means of social happiness. The progress of our country in her career of greatness, not only in the vast extension of our territorial limits and the rapid increase of our population, but in resources and wealth, and in the happy condition of our people, is without an example in the history of nations." Then came the repeal of the act of 1842. Although “Polk and Dallas" had been elected as friends of that measure, Dallas cast the vote that destroyed it, and we had the revenue tariff of 1846, known as the "Walker act." From another like it "Good Lord, deliver us." A few years after its enactment, and while it was still in force, President Fillmore said-I quote from his message of December 2, 1851. To this I particularly request the attention of the gentleman from Texas [Mr. Mills], who stated in his speech a few days since that the passage of the pending bill would benefit the farmers of this country by stimulating the exportation of grain. President Fillmore said: * * "The value of our exports of breadstuffs and provisions, which it was supposed the incentive of a low tariff and large importations from abroad would have greatly augmented, has fallen from $68,701,921 in 1847, to $26,051,373 in 1850, and to $21,848,653 in 1851, with a strong probability, amounting almost to a certainty, of a still further reduction in the current year. The policy which dictated a low rate of duties on foreign merchandise, it was thought by those who promoted and established it, would tend to benefit the farming population of this country by increasing the demand and raising the price of agricultural products in foreign markets. The foregoing facts, however, seem to show incontestably that no such result has followed the adoption of this policy." Again do I quote from President Fillmore, from his message of December 6, 1852: "Without repeating the arguments contained in my former message in favor of discriminating protective duties I deem it my duty to call your attention to one or two other considerations affecting this subject. The first is the effect of large importations of foreign goods upon our currency. Most of the gold of California, as fast as it is coined, finds its way directly to Europe in payment for goods purchased. In the second place, as our manufacturing establishments are broken down by competition with foreigners, the capital invested in them is lost, thousands of honest and industrious citizens are thrown out of employment, and the farmer to that extent is deprived of a home market for the sale of his surplus produce. In the third place, the destruction of our munufactures leaves the foreigner without competition in our market, and he consequently raises the price of the article sent here for sale, as is now seen in the increased cost of iron imported from England." Mr. Chairman, the inevitable result of a tariff for revenue followed. The condition of our country was most deplorable, sad beyond description. If my friends on the other side take exceptions to my citations from President Fillmore, because he did not agree with them politically, nor believe in the doctrine that they now advocate, I beg them to remember that I have also quoted Presidents Jackson and Polk to the like effect, and surely their testimony should be "gilt-edged " to my Bourbon friends of the Cleveland persuasion. But if they still demur, if they are not yet convinced of the error of their ways, I offer them the following, from one who moved for many years as a chieftain among the captains in the camps of Democracy. They are also the words of a President, one who had achieved the great ambition of his life, and one who from his high position seemed to realize that after all life was a failure, and that the great party whose battles he had fought, whose victories he had won, and whose honors he had worn, stood for principles utterly destructive of the interests of the confiding people whose destinies were in its keeping, and who in sorrow and much tribulation turned to him for relief. I read from the message of President Buchanan to the Congress, dated December 8, 1857: "The earth has yielded her fruits abundantly and has bountifully rewarded the toil of the husbandman. Our great staples have commanded high prices, and until within a brief period our manufacturing, mineral, and mechanical occupations have largely partaken of the general prosperity. We have possessed all the elements of material wealth in rich abundance, and yet, notwithstanding all these advantages, our country in its monetary interests is at the present moment in a deplorable con dition. In the midst of unsurpassed plenty in all the productions, and in all the elements of natural wealth, we find our manufactures suspended, our public works retarded, our private enterprises of different kinds abandoned, and thousands of useful laborers thrown out of employment and reduced to want." Cleveland and Democratic party. -GOFF, Record, 3615. No. 111.-I assume, Mr. Chairman, that Mr. Cleveland is not the Democratic party. It is true beyond a question that he has the Democratic party by the throat and is compelling it to do what he pleases. I notice gentlemen on this floor who are Democrats and have been all their lives, who come here as the representatives of Democratic constituencies, that squirm and wriggle in the tight grasp of this political despot, but they cannot escape; they bend to his will because he has possession of the flesh-pots, which have always been attractive since the days when Moses led the Israelites from the land of Egypt and out of the house of bondage. Holding the flesh-pots as he does, ladling out the pork, Mr. Cleveland is the Democratic party. The others rush to the feed-trough at his call and obey his commands. Taking him as the Democratic party, I will not permit that he select what are and what are not war taxes that should be removed. Cleveland for free trade. -NICHOLLS, of Indiana, Record, 4579. No. 112.-Mr. President, is that the language of a protectionist or of a free-trader. There is not a free-trade club in the United States or in England where that would not be adopted, and accepted as the language of a free-trader. As I said, it is not aimed at irregularities, it is not aimed at inequalities, but it is aimed at what the President assumes to be the protective tax, and it is that which is to be stricken down. Will some Democrat who insists that the President is a protectionist rise to explain this language? Nay, more; there are thirty-seven Democrats sitting on that side of the Chamber. Will any one of them rise in his place and say the President of the United States is in his judgment a protectionist? They dare not go to the country on any such issue. They are like the animal that is between the two bundles of hay. [No one arose.-ED.] Cleveland and free sugar. -Senator PLATT, Record, 1014. No. 113.-President Cleveland does not suggest free sugar, and the Democratic Ways and Means Committee of this House do not suggest it. Oh, no! That would strike Democratic States. That might disturb the harmony of the solid South. They have their eyes on the wool industry of Ohio, the iron industry of Pennsylvania, the cotton manufacturing industry of New England, and the lumber industry of the Pacific Slope, Michigan, and certain Northern States. In fact their notions of free trade do not seem to travel south of the Potomac, or to seriously affect any industry in the States from which the 153 Democratic electoral votes never fail to come. -GALLINGER, Record, 3692. Cleveland-Indifference to the interests of the people. No. 114.-This portion of President Cleveland's message, for coldblooded indifference to the interests of the people and for active and bitter opposition to the great system by which they have prospered and their country grown great, is entitled to precedence over all emanations from the Executive Mansion in all our history. In this is he isolated, alone in his suggestion, entitled to and deserving of the fame it will bring. From such a spirit as this, dominating as it does almost with a single impulse the Democratic side of this House, I would save our industries and our homes. Cleveland and Jefferson contrasted. -GOFF, Record, 3613. CLEVELAND'S MESSAGE DECEMBER 6, 1887. No. 115.—“ Our scheme of taxation, by means of which this needless surplus is taken from the people and put into the public Treasury, consists of a tariff or duty levied upon importations from abroad and internal-revenue taxes upon the consumption of tobacco and spirituous and malt liquors. It must be conceded that none of the things subjected to internal revenue taxation are, strictly speaking, necessaries; there appears to be no just complaint of this taxation by the consumers of these articles, and there appears to be nothing so well able to bear the burden without hardship to any portion of the people." It is thus that the "emphasis" of the recent message points to the plan of reducing the revenue on the tariff only. Now let me refer to the sig. nificant contrast of the second inaugural address of President Jefferson, March 4, 1805-a Democratic authority which will hardly be held as inferior to that of any of his successors. Jefferson appears to have exulted in the abandonment of all internal-revenue taxes, as follows: "The remaining revenue on the consumption of foreign articles is paid cheerfully by those who can afford to add foreign luxuries to domestic comforts. Being collected on our seaboard and frontiers only, and incorporated with the transactions of our mercantile citizens, it may be the pleasure and the pride of an American to ask what farmer, what mechanic, what laborer ever sees a tax-gatherer in the United States." In his last message, of December, 1808, referring to manufactures, he said: "Little doubt remains that the establishments formed and forming will-under the auspices of cheaper materials and subsistence, the freedom of labor from taxation with us, and of protecting duties and prohibitions-become permanent." In a letter to his friend, Colonel Humphreys, dated January 20, 1809, he says: "My idea is that we should encourage home manufactures to the extent of our own consumption of everything of which we raise the raw material." Most certainly the statesmanship of Jefferson was pitched on a different key from that now current in some quarters. -Senator MORRILL, Record, 3017. Cleveland opposes Washington, Jefferson, Madison, No. 116.-There has been no Congressional term since 1866, when the Republican party has been in power in this House, that taxation has not been reduced, and that party to day is in favor of reducing taxation to such sum as shall only be necessary to meet the principal and interest upon the public debt, pay the pensions provided for our soldiers, and the necessary and proper expenditures of the Government as provided by law; but in making such reductions that party insists upon retaining our American system of protection to American labor and American industry, fully believing that such policy is for the best interest of our people. This policy has met with the approval of the Fathers of the Republic-of Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, of Adams and Jackson, and of Webster and Clay; of the men who framed our Constitution, as well as of men who have since stood by and defended it. Whatever language the Democratic party may use in its public utterances, whether it be tariff reform or tariff for revenue only, the spirit and tendency of that party upon that question is one which shall simply raise revenue for the support of the Govornment without taking into consideration the effect the same may have upon our industries or our labor. -BREWER, Record, 3604. Cleveland-Remarkable passage in message. No. 117.-Now listen to this remarkable passage: He receives at the desk of his employer his wages, and perhaps before he reaches his home is obliged, in a purchase for family use of an article which embraces his own labor, to return in the payment of the increase in price which the tariff permits the hard earned compensation of many days of toil." I wish the President had told us what that article was, of family use, and the worker's own manufacture, which, as he went from his shop, where he had received his wages, compelled him to pay, in addition to what he would pay under free trade, many days' wages." Mr. Presi dent, if anybody but the President of the United States had made a statement of that sort I should apply a word and a term characteristic of it which it is not proper for me to do in regard to him. -Senator PLATT, Record, 1014. Cleveland violating party pledges. No. 118.-Why do they also declare that sufficient revenue to pay all the expenses of the Federal Government, economically administered, including pensions, interest and principal of public debt, can be got under our present system of taxation from custom-house taxes on fewer imported articles, bearing heaviest on articles of luxury and bearing lightest on articles of necessity? By this declaration they asserted that if they were intrusted with power they would so administer the Government that all other taxes, except the tariff, would be altogether unnecessary. Why, in view of this pledge, did the President propose to retain the revenue taxes? I ask the gentleman from Missouri if this was not a pledge on their part that they would return to the policies in reference to the collection of the revenue that had never been deviated from in all of the early history of the Government? Mr. Chairman, I hold that it will be the darkest day in the history of our Government when it shall have become an established rule that the great political parties that control the policies and shape the destinies of the nation can with safety and impunity deliberately violate the pledges that they have made to the American people when they were asking to be intrusted with power. -KERR, Record, 3639. Cleveland's wife might give him information. No. 119.—The protectionist insists that whenever a duty is laid which protects the American manufacturer, competition among home producers always has and always will bring down the price of the domestic article "approximately, at least," to use the President's language, to the price of the foreign article on which duty is laid, less the duty. The President ought to have known this, as it seems to me. Did he or his "better-half" ever buy calico. If he did he must know that while the tax, as he calls it, the duty, as the protectionist calls it, is 6 cents per square yard upon calico, he can buy the American article for less than that at retail stores here in the city of Washington. |