The Texas Miner, Volume 1, Number 44, November 17, 1894 Page: 7
24 p. : ill. ; 32 cm.View a full description of this newspaper.
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THlE TEXAS MINER.
7
MORAL, RATHER THAN A PARTÍSAN, VICTORY.
THE day after'the election Messrs. Watson & (Gibson of New
York sai,d: r: ; -
"Business offices, banks and the exchanges were dosed yester-
day, but it was the busiest day of the year. The., people have
demonstrated again that the power of correcting public abuses
and bad policies is an active, living force. Republican institu-
tions have again vindicated themselves and conservative persons,
who often have feared the ability and honesty of our system of
universal franchise, will take fresh courage. It was a moral,
rather than a partisan, victory, and henceforth people will have
more faith in the inviolability of property and in the right of a
man to the rewards of his labor. The overwhelming defeat of
Tammany Hall will .be an example for other cities to follow in re-
generating their municipal affairs.
"Applying the election results to financial affairs, we predict
the stimulation of industry. The election of a Republican major-
ity in Congress, and the defeat of W. L. Wilson of West Virginia,
practically insures the country against a reopening of the tariff
question. The Republicans"can make no radical tariff changes
or put into force any other strictly partisan measures during the
two years of Cleveland's tenure of office. This will give the
country a rest on this question, which has kept the business inter-
ests in a state of uncertainty ever since the advent of Democratic
tariff reformers or tariff disturbers in November, 1892. We may
sum up our impressions of the significance of yesterday's event by
saying that as the assassination of (larfield in July, i88i,gave
the country a moral shock and marked the culmination of the
boom period of 1879-81, so the result of yesterday's political vic-
tories, brought about by Democratic as well as by Republican
votes, is a moral bracer, and it ought to mark the culmination of
the panic period which began in Wall street in 1890.
"It takes time for the public to appreciate what it all means,
but such a sweeping change in politics can hardly be passed by
without an important influence on business, and we feel confident
that that influence must be very favorable.
"One important result of the election is the defeat of the Pop-
ulists in Kansas and Colorado, and the defeat of all their candi-
dates except that of Governor in Nebraska. This gives people
more confidence in railroad property in the West. It shows that
common sense and common honesty are as characteristic of the
Western as of the Eastern states."
The next day, in their daily market letter, they say:
"The purging of this great metropolis of a band of political
spoilsmen was of great encouragement to all believers in the
power of cities to govern themselves decently under our system
of free suffrage. The overwhelming Republican majority in the
House of Representatives and the working Republican majority
in the Senate insure the repeal of the present monstrous income
tax legislation, which Cleveland could hardly veto, and,.more
than that, it guarantees the country against any disturbance of
the tariff question for at least two or three years. But perhaps the
most important result of all, from an economic-social point of
view, is the defeat of Populism. Altgeld in Illinois is repudiated.
"Lafe" Pence and Governor Waite in Colorado, "Jerry'' Simp-
son and Governor Llewellyn in Kansas, are all retired from pub-
lic service and are succeeded by conservative Republicans. ¿The
better sense of those communities asserted *• itself - and redeemed
those Western states from the reproach brought on them and
damage done by the rise to power and influence of crazy Social-
ists and demagogues. The result of this election, looked at from
an economic or moral or social point of view, is most gratifying.
It must affect sentiment favorably and inspire a gradual revival
of confidence and enterprise. We may not feel the full force of
it in a day or week, but we shall be benefic iaries of this intellec-
tual and moral revolt before long. In connection with the grain
and cotton business, it is gratifying to learn that Hatch of Mis-
souri, the anti-option crank, has been repudiated by his constitu-
ents, and thus disappears from Congress one of those chronic agi-
tators of economic folly.
"We have already chronicled our abiding faith that the present
election, with Republican majorities of amazing ' proportions,
means better times, and means it in no uncertain way."
THE HOME AND THE FLAG.
— ~.
STUDIES. IN SOCIAL ECONOMICS-—BY J. ELLEN FOSTER.
XVII.
THE Constitution of the United States was framed after months
of careful scrutiny into industrial conditions and political ne-
cessities.
The utter inability of Congress under the then existing Con-
federacy to improve these conditions, or even to grapple with
them, was conspicuous and hopeless.
The familiar charge that the articles of confederation held the
states together by a rope of sand is as true as it is familiar.
The history of civilization proves that necessity more than any
other force in the impelling and erystalizing agency in state build-
ing and statecraft.
Political theories, however beautiful are never tested while
they flloat in thin air above the people's necessities. Under
monarchical systems the necessities of rulers are the denser air,
the lower altitude in which the people secure chartered rights. In
Democratic governments the home, the farm, the shop condense
social and economic vagaries into constitutions and laws to serve
the necessities of the whole people.
Under the Confederacy Congress had no power to put a gen-
eral tariff on imports, except with the agreement of all the states.
For various reasons—but chiefly supposed self-interest—never did
all agree. Conflicting legislation among the states, petty jealous-
ies between the states and adverse commercial policies on the
part of Great Britain, had greatly weakened, or well nigh de-
stroyed, manufactures and trade. The great heart of Washing-
ton mourned lest the welfare of the people and the autonomy of
the Nation which had been secured in war should be lost in peace
through lack of vigor and unity in industrial policy.
During the colonial period England had by prohibitive legisla-
tion stifled the growth and crushed out American manufactures.
She did not permit her colonists in America to export wool, yarn,
cloth or woolen manufactures out of the country under penalty of
forfeiture.
Certain lines of manufacture were limited by express statute,
and the interchange of their products between the colonies was
prohibited.
Parliament permitted such industries, and such only, as aided
England's manufactures, as, for instance, pig iron could be pro-
duced and sent to England to be returned again to this country
in articles demanded by our domestic trade; but the erection of
any "plant ' to do the work here was prohibited under heavy pen-
alty.
Even the great Lord Chatham boldly declared that the colo-
nists should not make a horseshoe, or a hob-nail, this purpose
was later strengthened by the absolute prohibition of the export
of artisans in iron, still later of cotton and woolen machinery, or
those who could operate such machinery. When iron and coal
were found in such quantities as to warrant their co-operation in
the service of internal improvements Great Britain, no longer able
to put its destructive hand on this industry, in 1799 prohibited
the export of colliers, in order to keep other countries in ignor-
ance of coal mining methods.
In the words of a current writer, "England's object was to
keep the colonists all farmers, so as to supply her home people,
engaged mostly in manufacturing, with food and raw materials,
and to compel the colonists to take from her in return her manu-
factured products; also to pay profits both ways—in other words,
to compel them to sell to England all they had to sell, their agri-
cultural surplus, and to buy from her all they were obliged to
purchase, all manufactured articles of importance. This process
w as pleasing and remunerative to "British manufacturers and capi-
talists; but it kept the colonists poor and almost ruined them, for,
as has been shown, they were forbidden to manufacture anything
themselves, and they were never able to raise an agricultural sur-
plus sufficient to pay for what they had to import."
When the Declaration of Independence and the success of the
Revolutionary war rendered England's prohibitions on bur soil no
longer of effect, when she sought to prevent her own skilled labor
from leaving her little island, and yet our people still dared to
attempt to develop their own resources, and build up their own
manufactures,' then she subsidized her own merchant marine in
the interest of English against American commerce, and sought
by gold and intrigue to gain supporters for her interests among
American statesmen, and by petty cunning to gain by diplomacy
and strategem what she had failed to accomplish by war.
Is it any wonder that true statesmen deplored the lack of na-
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McAdams, Walter B. The Texas Miner, Volume 1, Number 44, November 17, 1894, newspaper, November 17, 1894; Thurber, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth200491/m1/7/: accessed May 7, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Tarleton State University.