Newspaper Page Text
0l)e Jeffersonian
Vol. 8, Number 6
oRNOTHER TALK ON THE TARIFF
ID you know that to the almost for
gotten statesman, George McDuffie, be
longs the distinction of having made
the most powerful and most prophetic
speech (hat was ever made in Congress
against our damnable Tariff System?
d
Well, it does. Such men as Nelson Ding
ley and Joseph H. Walker were good judges
in such a matter, and they regarded Mc-
Duffie's argument as the strongest ever made
against (he New England scheme of enrich
ing its capitalists by plundering other sec
tions. Dr. Gold win Smith should also be a
competent judge, and you will find that Mc-
Duffie's speech is the one he quotes from in
his “Political History of the United States.'’
Mr. McDuffie's great speech against the
protective system is too long to be reproduced
here: but in the concluding paragraphs he
predicted with such clearness of vision the
reign of rotten business and rotten politics
which now afflicts us that his words read
like an inspired prophecy:
“Sir, when T consider that, by a single bill like
the present, millions of dollars may be trans
ferred annually from one part of the community
to another; when I consider the disguise of disin
terested patriotism under which the basest and
most profligate ambition may perpetrate such an
act of injustice and political prostitution, I cannot
hesitate, for a moment, to pronounce this system
the most stupendous instrument of corruption
ever placed in the hands of public functionaries.
“IT BRINGS AMBITION AND AVARICE AND
WEALTH INTO A COMBINATION WHICH IT IS
FEARFUL TO CONTEMPLATE, BECAUSE IT IS
ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE TO RESIST.
“Do we not perceive, at this very moment, the
extraordinary and melancholy spectacle of less
than one hundred thousand capitalists, by means
of this unchallenged combination, exercising an
absolute and despotic control over the opinions of
eight millions of free citizens and the fortunes
and destinies of ten millions?
“Sir, I will not anticipate or forebode evil.
A WORD TO THE HOSTILE DRUMMER
H
AVE I ever done you any harm? Have
I ever given you any valid excuse for
abusing me? What vote of mine, in
the Georgia legislature, or in Con
gress, met your condemnation? What
speech of mine do you find fault with?
What book, or editorial, penned by me, stirs
your indignation?
When the people have called on me for un
selfish service, when did I ever refuse it?
When great moral issues were on trial,
when did I ever shoulder arms for the im
moral ?
When great principles were at stake, who
fought for them harder than I ?
Have you ever known me to make a play to
the grand-stand?
Have you ever seen me flinch under punish
ment? Did you ever know me to desert a
friend or apostatize on a conviction? Did you
ever hear me boast after victory, or whine,
after defeat?
Am I not standing where I stood twenty
two years ago, when making my first race for
Congress? Did I not. in Congress, strive for
the very things that I’m battling for, now?
Has not the Insurgent Republican and the
Thomson, Ga., Thursday, February 9, 1911
1 will not permit myself to believe that the Presi
dency of the United States will ever he bought
and sold. But I must say that there are certain
quarters of this Union in which, if the candidates
for the Presidency should come forward with this
Harrisburg tariff in his hand, nothing could resist
his pretensions if his adversary were opposed to
this unjust system of oppression.’’
*****
“Indeed, Sir, when I contemplate the extra
ordinary infatuation which a combination of capi
talists and politicians have had the heart to
diffuse over more than one-half of this Union—
when I see the very victims who are about to be
offered up to satiate the voracious appetite of this
devouring Moloch, paying their ardent and sin
cere devotions at his bloody shrine, I confess I
have been tempted to doubt whether mankind was
not doomed, even in its most enlightened state, to
be the dupe of some form of imposture, and the
victim of some form of tyranny.
“Sir, in casting my eyes over the history of
human idolatry, I can find nothing, even in the
darkest ages of ignorance and superstition, which
surpasses the infatuation by which a confederated
priesthood of politicians and manufacturers have
bound the great body of the people of the farm
ing states of this Union, as if by a spell, TO THIS
MIGHTY SCHEME OF FRAUD AND DELUSION.’’
*****
Bear in mind that this speech was made in
1824.
Then look around you and see how pro
phetically Mr. McDuffie pictured the future.
The Presidency is bought and sold. Con
gress is bought and sold. The confederated
priesthood of politicians and manufacturers
does dominate an infatuated people whom it
deludes and plunders.
The Trusts are nothing in the world but
the legitimate children of Privilege and Pro
tection.
Campaign boodle-funds are nothing in the
world but the sop which the corrupt com
bination of capitalists pay to renew the lease
which they hold on the Government.
real Democrat tardily advanced to the posi
tion on which we old Pops marked our firing
line?
Is not the whole country—so far as the
common people are concerned—seething with
Populism? Drop the blinders, and open wide
your eyes. See things as they are. Be man
enough to admit that you've honestly mis
understood me.
Let's get together. Let us co-operate in
good work. I am not after anything for my
self. I don't want your vote—nor your
money.
As Editor, publisher and unpaid cam
paigner, I can do my people far more service
than would be possible were I in office.
Nobody’s boss, I'm nobody's slave. No
corporation, or specially privileged interest
will ever clamp fetters on me. The truth, as
I see it. will always be what you’ll hear from
me—regardless of personal consequences.
When the South has been assailed by the
North, have I ever failed to defend my own
people?
When insolent, pampered, commonplace
Booker Washingtons and Bishop Turners
have vaingloriously bragged about the ad-
And. as Mr. McDuffie said, the most as
tounding feature of the whole diabolical sys
tem is the completeness with which the poli
ticians and the Privileged can dupe the vic
tims of Protection into the belief that the
Privilege benefits the unprivileged.
With the doors of immigration standing
wide open, vomiting into our industrial world
all the cheap white labor of the universe, our
Protected capitalists are still able to convince
our wage-earners that American capital pro
tects American labor from the competition of
foreign “pauper'’ labor!
Having ground down the price of factory
labor to such a low point that they can under
sell foreigners in the foreign market, our
Privileged and Protected Capitalists can
nevertheless convince American laborers that
the motive for high tariffs is to enable the
capitalist to pay big wages!
And they swallow it——the wage-earners
swallow it, meeklv, blindly, trustfully.
The record of a century teaches them noth
ing. ’ ■- T f
The evidences of their own senses are
ignored.
The very factory hand who. at Fall River,
lived off the soup of the Salvation Army, de
voutly believed that if it hadn't been for the
Protective system they wouldn’t even have got
the soup.
The factory girl who is paid five dollars per
week, and who. when she complains that she
cannot live on the wage, is sardonically ad
vised to get a gentleman friend, actually be
lieves that were it not for Privilege and Pro
tection she would not get the five dollars.
God in heaven ! No wonder that George
McDuffie expressed his doubt as to whether
the masses could ever be enlightened. No
(continued on page nine.)
vancement of the negro, have I ever failed to
demonstrate that the black man is but the
slavish imitator of the white man's develop
ments ?
Which one of the public men of the South
has shown a greater concern for her past, her
present and her future? Who is better
equipped to meet her enemies in the gate?
Which one of your leaders has shown that
he understands, better than I do. the great
principles of good government ?
Don't you think that the white people of
the South sorely need a leader—unselfish,
patriotic and capable? Did you ever see a
great organization more clumsily generalled
than the Democratic party has been? Can
you not recognize the irreconcileable differ
ences of interests and opinions that tear it
with internal convulsions?
Why not join with us in our Peoples’
movement, and purge the party of all those
so-called Democrats whose convictioits ought
to carry them to the Republicans?
Let us make (ho Democratic party demo
cratic.
And then let us work for reforms that will
bring about prosperity, and a higher, nobler
standard of living.
Price, Five Cents