SPEECH

AT MUSIC HALL, BOSTON, OCT. 5, 1891, UPON THE TARIFF AND ITS EFFECT UPON MASSACHUSETTS.

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THANK you most heartily for your cordial welcome. May I consider it not only a proof of your sympathy and support in the pending struggle, but also your indorsement of an administration which has honestly, earnestly tried to serve the people's interests, and promote the welfare of our beloved Commonwealth? As I believe it is the privilege and duty of every citizen carefully to examine the acts of a public servant, so it is the privilege and duty of such servant to account to the people for every act, and also to defend himself from unjust and malignant criticism. One such criticism to-night I propose to answer. The great honor has been given me by the people of the Commonwealth of presiding over her affairs. With that honor has come the grave responsibility faithfully and unselfishly to serve her interests, to defend her glorious institutions, and to uphold her honor. Any public servant of hers unfaithful in this is disloyal to his Commonwealth. Among the foolish, the false, and the wicked issues which the Republican party has endeavored to raise in this campaign to excite prejudice rather than to carry conviction, is the charge that in a public address delivered by me in New York on the tariff question I maligned the Commonwealth. With suspicious unanimity, as if suggested and forced by cam

paign managers, that charge has been echoed through the Republican Press, which refuses, however, to print the address. To-night, again, I chalienge the "Boston Journal" and the Republican newspapers to print that speech, the whole of it, not a single sentence. But

you will look in vain for it there from now until election day, though these papers profess to rely upon it as a strong reason for my defeat. Then this charge. has been caught up by my distinguished opponent, and after him have come Tray, Blanche, and Sweetheart, barking it at my heels. Let me read the charge as formulated by him in his speech at Haverhill, September 22. He then said:

"We have in Massachusetts this year as our chief magistrate a Democrat. . . . Massachusetts had a right to expect that every son of hers, especially if endowed with the highest honors in her gift, would be a valiant defender of her honor wherever he went. And yet very soon after his inauguration, while the very plaudits of his friends were ringing in his ears, he took occasion to detract from our industries, to detract from this old Commonwealth. He spoke of our abandoned farms, and of our great industries 'folding their tents, like the Arabs, and silently stealing away.'"

Let me correct the first mistake of Mr. Allen — small, however, in comparison with the others and remind him that I delivered that speech some time before I entered office, as a private citizen, and not as Governor of the Commonwealth. So much for the charge. Let us see upon what it is founded. The speech referred to was delivered by me, Dec. 23, 1890, before the Tariff Reform Club of New York at its celebration of the great tariff reform victory that had swept over the country, and in response to the toast, "The

place of New England in that contest: once more she rebels against unequal and unjust taxation." A political revolution had broken Massachusetts away from her Republican moorings in the election of her congressmen and Governor. That result, after three years of thorough discussion, was due to the tariff question, — unless Mr. Lodge believes that he and his Force Bill were a potent influence in turning Massachusetts from Republicanism to the pleasant paths of Democracy. It was her protest, founded upon mature consideration, against the Republican policy on the tariff as embodied in the McKinley Bill. In that speech I spoke as follows of the influences that controlled her decision. I quote now every word that has been subject to adverse criticism:

"Two great influences controlled the action of Massachusetts on this question: first, her material interests; and, second, her moral sense of right and wrong. She remembered that under a low tariff her great industries were established and her manufacturing towns were founded; that in 1857 she, with the rest of New England, was in favor of the lowest tariff our country has had for generations; she recalled that in those days her agriculture thrived, her industries progressed by leaps and bounds, her commerce carried our flag into every part of the civilized world, and the New England coast rang with the music of anvil and of mallet, building the clipper ships that should win the carrying trade of the world. Then she lived through thirty years of stringent protection. And sitting down at last to examine her condition after such careful 'nursing,' she found her agriculture declining, and new and ill-omened officers, commissioners of abandoned farms, created in some of the New England States. Her foreign commerce had been swept from the seas. Great industries, that for generations. had been her glory and her strength, were folding their tents, like the Arabs, and silently stealing away.' Others

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were stagnant, others greatly prosperous; and the line of cleavage between stagnation and prosperity seemed to be free raw material. She felt the great and growing competition of the West and the South, with their natural advantages secured to them, while her own were destroyed by a policy which set aside a law of Nature and the will of God. Massachusetts, with her inherited aptitude for skilled industries, will take her chance in any fair competition. She does object to competing with her hands tied; she protests against law holding the knife that would cut the throat of her great industries. But I love to think that a higher influence than her pocket controlled her action. I know that wrong which touches the pocket pricks the conscience. I also know that Massachusetts God bless her! against her material interests, has been the fruitful field of many an agitation for human rights, equality, and freedom, meant to be the forerunner of law, and successful in their purpose. If the spirit of the olden time was still in her, it was inevitable that she, true to her history and her traditions, again should protest against unequal and unjust taxation."

Because of that opinion, expressed by me as a private citizen, and because of that only, have arisen the hue and cry that I have "detracted from this old Commonwealth." Let me answer this charge, not because I believe any unprejudiced man seriously thinks that the statement quoted is "detraction" of our Commonwealth, but because it gives me an opportunity to show what party and what policy are really injuring the Commonwealth and her industries. First, the argument and facts stated in that speech have been used over and over again in campaigns in Massachusetts, without the charge that such discussion of an economic question was maligning the Commonwealth. Is it maligning her to declare one's honest conviction that high-tariff taxation of the raw materials of our industries has injured

and is injuring those industries? Has such taxation become so sacred that one cannot question it without being traduced as an enemy of the Commonwealth? Second, was not my statement of her condition, of her protest against unjust restrictions and unfair competition, and of the high moral purpose that guided her, and always has, far more complimentary to her than the graphic account given by my distinguished opponent of her agricultural and mineral resources? In his recent speech at Haverhill he said: "As an agricultural country Massachusetts cannot hope to excel. If Nature has endowed her with mineral resources, she has corked them up too safely in her bosom for our convenient inspection, and as a mineral community we are a dead failure.” Was he, too, maligning the Commonwealth? Third. But my critics say, “No matter what your motive; no matter if you are patriotically trying to establish free raw materials for the benefit of our industries, and protesting against the selfish restrictions which Ohio and Pennsylvania have forced upon Massachusetts; no matter if Massachusetts has declared emphatically in favor of such change,still, your facts are wrong, and so you have insulted. the Commonwealth." Well, let us examine these facts. There are volumes of instruction on the tariff question in a fair and careful study of them.

Is it not true that under a low tariff our great industries were established and our manufacturing towns were founded? Turn to the history of Lowell, with such great manufacturing companies as the Hamilton, Appleton, Lowell, Middlesex, Lawrence, Boott, Massa- chusetts, Lowell bleachery and Lowell machine shop, all established before 1860; or to the history of Lawrence, with its Washington and Atlantic mills, built in 1846, its Pacific and Pemberton mills, incorporated