Speech #550042416

Not intending to speak disrespectfully of the gentlemen who have had the management and control of it. it is full of demagogy. It professes to protect the farming classes of our country. when it does not. We have heard the changes rung in this Chamber on that. and this fall we will hear it from the hustings in every State and Territory of the Union that the grand old Republican party has come back to the policy of protection. and that it protects the farmer and the laborer against the pauper labor of Europe. Sir. out in my State. where the mercury reaches 440 and 450 below zero at times. where it is not an uncommon thing to see the sundog. it will be a wonderful consolation to the man who lives on the prairie in a little hut. and who has to go 15 or 20 miles across a bleak plain to get a ton of coal. to know that the Republican party has increased the tariff from 40 cents to about 75 cents a ton. What a consolation it will be to him and to his wife and little ones who stand hovering over a single stove to warm themselves to know that tho tariff has been increased almost 100 per cent. and that they are paying for that coal with corn at 10 cents. oats at 14 cents. and wheat at 35 or 40 cents a bushel.