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The Campaign

The Campaign image
Parent Issue
Day
6
Month
November
Year
1894
Copyright
Public Domain
OCR Text

At last the campaign has closeck The issues are made up. The lines of battle are formed and the contest of the ballots is on. Whatever the result may be, democracy will have the satisfaction of having made a clean and honest campaign of principies and education. It has contended for the historie principies of democracy - local self government, free from federal interference, just taxation, civil and religious liberty, honest money and equal rights for all and special privileges for none. And as an earnest of what it will do along these lines if continued in control, it has appealed to the people on its record of accomplishment during the past nineteen months. Since its accession to control and responsibility for legislation, it has repealed the purchase clause of the Sherman silver law, a law which reduced silver to a mere commodity in the interest of the gold bugs. The Sherman law was not in the interest of silver. Is was enacted in the interest of the silver mine owners and for the purpose of holding the wavering republican mine owners of the west in line. It has repealed the odious federal election law and driven federal bayonets away from the polls, thus restoring to the people the control of local affairs. It has repealed the McKinley monstrocity and placed on the statute books a tax law framed in the interest of revenue ininstead of the trystsand monopolies. Under the McKinley law, which largely increased the burdens of the people, the revenues were lopped off in the interest of protection, and during the last fiscal year of its ex istence, they were $69,000,000 less than the expenditures. It has repealed the sugar bounty act by which the people were taxed $i3, ooo,ooo annually for the benefit of the 600 cane growers of Louisiana. It has reduced the expenditures of the government $28,000,000. It has removed the tariff on lumber, by which every man who built a house was compelled to pay a tribute to the pine barons. This will result in a saving of $40,000,000 a year to the people. It has placed salt on the free list saving to the people the 82 per cent tax on salt, in bulk, amounting to millions annually. It has reduced the tariff on woolenwear from an average of 98 per cent. to 48 per cent., saving to the people an amount estimated at $163,000,000 a year It has raised the tax on distilled liquors from 90 cents to $1.10 per gallon, thereby increasing the revenues to the amount of $20,000,000. It has introduced a new principie into national taxation that lifts from the shoulders of the poor bw means of the income tax a burden of many millions of dollars. These are a few of the salient features of whai the democratie pa.ty has done in the past nineteen months in the interest of the people and much more will be accomplished if it is sustained and upheld by the people. On the other hand, what kind of a campaign has the republican party putup? What has it promised to do if returned to power as an offset to democratie accomplishnient in the interest of the people? Nothing. It has simply been "agin" the democrats. Relying on the great credulity of the masses and their inability to trace effeets to their proper cause, it has conducted a campaign of falsehood, charging upon the democratie party the responsibility for the great panic of 1893. It has brazenly asserted that the panic of 1893 was the result of the fear of reduction of taxes commanded by the people themselves. Ihat party with equal mendacity has declared that during the long years of republican ascendency there were no such things as panics, smokeless furnaces, idle labor, tramps and free soup houses. All this too, in the face of the fact that the panic of 1873, tne worst from which this country has ever suffered, when there were millions of idle workmen, occurred when every branch of the governmeht was and had been for thirteen years under the complete control of the republican party. The species, tramp, had its origin in this panic and is a legitímate offspring of protection. So had the free soup house. During the years of this panic the number of faiiures was unprecedented and the liabilities amounted to more than one and a half billions of dollars. From 1883 to 1890 the number of faiiures exceeded 82,000 and the liabilities 1 1,250,000,000. Not since the tariff of 1883 went into effect has the number of faiiures fallen below 9,000 a year. During this period the conflicts between employers and employees increased until riots and bloodshed became so numerous as to excite but little interest except in the most extreme cases. During the years 1883, 1884. 1885, and 1886, we had 2 977 strikes in 17,271 establishments, embracing 1,039,011 employees. The number of strikes increased from 471, affecting 129,591 employees in 1881, to 1,411, affecting 499,489 employees in 1 886. During the years 1882 to 1886, inclusive, lockouts occurred in 2,214 establishments, affecting 175,270 employees. The estimated wage loss to employees by reason of strikes and lockouts during these six years aggregated $59,972,440. Nor were industrial conditions improved under the McKinleyact. In 1890 the number of failures reached 10,907, with liabihties aggregating $189,856,964. In 1891, the failures numbered 12,273, with üabilities of $189,868,693, and the conflicts between employers and employees which before had reached only the dignity of combats and riots, now became pitched battles between great forces armed with rifle and cannon. In 1893, there 15,560 failures, with liabilities amounting to $462,000,000. In the face of all these facts, publicans have continued to proclaim tlie monumental falsehood that the loftiest heights of prosperity and contentment were reached under protection, and especially under the McKinley act. Rut we challenge thera to point to any period of like duration, in thehistory of this or any other country, when there were so many panics, depressions, strikes, closed factories, idle men, and commercial failures. But the republican party, relying upon the propensity of the people to forget the past in the difficulties of the present, and to charge all the ills wliich beset them to the party in power, has boldiy proclaimed that these things never occurred. The party has not dared to declare its policy, if it be reinvested with control, on the tariff issue, the income tax, or any other important issue. However, it is so wedded to the principie of protection and special privileges and benefits, it can be depended upon to reinact McKinleyism, with the bounty on sugar, repeal the income tax and reestablish the rule of trusts and monopolies. The interests, of the peopie are bound up in the success of fhe democracy and if they are not blinded by the falshoods of the g. o p. which they repudiated in 1892, they will stand by the part} that is making the fight against discriminating legislation and unjust taxation, the party which demands equal rights for all and special privileges for none, the party which has always been the faithful guardián of the rights of all the people. Last week's edition of the Adrián Press, beside its usual fright of excellent literature and allopathic doses of tariff reform, is issued as a doublé edition, containing sixteen pages, printed on calandered paper, the special edition showing a galaxy of photos of the leading men of Adrián. The work is handsomely done and is a compliment and credit to the enterprise of the Press proprietor. The paper contains seventy-six cuts, among which appear a splendid page width view of Adrián college, a view of the State Industrial Home for Girls, Lenawee court house, Page VVire Fence works, churches of the city, etc. The venerable, but still vigorous face of Gen. D. D. Sinclair, now nearly 90, appears among the "photos," and we observe also the face of that still good looking and just as "still" wily and astute politician, "Uncle Charlie Redfield," who in his long career has made many men and unmade many others, and performed the trick so slick that "they never knew what hit 'em." Finally, brethren, farewell. You have had "line upon line, line upon line; precept upon precept, precept upon precept; here a little and there a little." If now you go to the polls and vote with the curse-howler against democracy, never expect forgiveness in this world or redemption in the next.

Article

Subjects
Ann Arbor Argus
Old News