410 PAPER MONEY AND A PROTECTIVE TARIFF. 



have come to think more of the party name and organization than of 

 the principles on which parties profess to be originally founded; and 

 when the perversion has thoroughly taken place, as it has in this 

 country at this moment, scarcely anything is a greater foe to real 

 progress than this hollow party spirit. What is it to be a Bepubli- 

 can to-day ? &quot;What is it to be a Democrat to-day ? No man can pos 

 sibly answer these questions, because there are no vital and general 

 differences now involved in these names. 



Party spirit has been particularly injurious to the farmers of this 

 country, because they have ranged themselves pretty evenly in both 

 of the two political parties, and the two parts have thus completely 

 neutralized each other. The interests of the farmers have had no 

 weight in either of the political parties, simply because the farmers 

 themselves stood over against each other in two opposing camps. 

 Thus the farmers, as such, lost all weight and influence in political 

 affairs. They are to be congratulated and applauded that the mass 

 of them have made up their minds to act no longer with the old po 

 litical parties, or with any other parties in fact, for the present. Let 

 them adhere to this determination; the country will be all the better 

 for it. Let them avoid entangling alliances, and snap their fingers 

 at the caucus. Let them act as a unit in accordance with their own 

 deliberate conviction of their own interests; for their true interests 

 are also the true interests of the w r hole country. Let them hold this 

 attitude steadily for five years, and there is not a single point of 

 public policy favorable to themselves that they cannot triumphantly 

 carry. If they come to see eye to eye, as pray God they may, that a 

 labor-wrought dollar, and not a printing-press dollar, is the only 

 dollar fit to be exchanged against their own labor-wrought produce, 

 then they can confer upon themselves and the w r hole country the 

 inestimable boon of labor-wrought dollars ! If they come to see, 

 as please God they will, that what is called &quot;protection&quot; is only 

 another name for spoliation; that what is called &quot;fostering&quot; industry 

 only makes industry to flounder; that tariffs take but never give; that 

 trade is good and gainful; that the world s market, whether to sell in 

 or buy in, is always better than the market of a single country; that 

 natural competition is the life of business and of progress; that re 

 strictive tariffs keep home things in, that want to go out, as well as 

 foreign things out, that want to come in; that exportables are de 

 pressed in value in proportion as importables are artificially en 

 hanced in value; and that God Almighty knows better how to adjust 

 all the obstacles to international trafic than any Congress that ever 

 sat, or ever will sit; then can they easily abolish this antiquated 

 scheme of greed and grab, and open up for themselves and for all 

 their fellow citizens, both to sell in and to buy in, the unrestricted 

 markets of the world ! 



