There is a very proper use I think that can be made of more than twenty millions of it. During the Civil War our customs receipts and our receipts from internal taxes, which last had brought under tribute almost every pursuit in life, were inadequate to the great drain upon our Treasury caused by the Civil War. Our Congress, exercising one of the powers of the Constitution, levied a direct tax upon the States. Ohio paid her part of it, Indiana paid hers, and so did the other loyal States. The Southern States were in rebellion and did not pay theirs. Now we have come to a time when the Government has surplus money, and the proposition was made in Congress to return this tax to the States that had paid it. [Applause.] The State of Indiana would have received one million dollars, which my fellow-citizens of this State know would have been a great relief to our taxpayers in the present depleted condition of our treasury. [Cheers.] I do not recall the exact amount Ohio would have received, but it was much larger. If any one asks, Why repay this tax? this illustration will be a sufficient answer: Suppose five men are associated in a business corporation. The corporation suffers losses and its capital is impaired. An assessment becomes necessary, and three members pay their assessments while two do not. The corporation is again prosperous and there is a surplus of money in the treasury. What shall be done with it? Manifestly, justice requires that the two delinquents should pay up or that there should be returned to the other three the assessment levied upon them. [Great cheering.] A bill providing for the repayment of the tax was killed in the House of Representatives, not by voting it down, but by filibustering, a majority of the House being in favor of its passage. And those who defeated the bill by those revolutionary tactics were largely from the States that had not paid the tax. [Cheers.] I mention these facts to show that twenty millions of the surplus now lying in the banks, where it draws no interest, might very righteously be used so as to greatly lighten the real burdens of taxation now resting on the people—burdens that the people know to be taxes without any argument from our statesmen. [Applause and laughter.] I am a lover of silence [laughter], and yet when such assemblies as these greet me with their kind, earnest faces and their kinder words, I do not know how I can do less than to say a few words upon some of these great public questions. I have spoken frankly and fearlessly my convictions upon these questions. [Cheers and cries of "Good! Good!">[ And now, unappalled by the immensity of this audience, I will complete the accustomed programme and take by the hand such of you as desire to meet me personally. [Cheers.]
[INDIANAPOLIS, SEPTEMBER 27.]
General Harrison's visitors this day came from Ohio and Pennsylvania. Hancock and Allen counties, Ohio, sent over a thousand, including the Harrison and Morton Battalion of Lima, commanded by Capt. Martin Atmer, and the Republican Veteran Club of Findlay, Rev. R. H. Holliday, President. The Chief Marshal of the combined delegations was Major S. F. Ellis, of Lima, hero of the forlorn hope storming column which carried the intrenchments at Port Hudson, La., June 15, 1863. Prominent members of the Allen County delegation were Hon. Geo. Hall, Geo. P. Waldorf, S. S. Wheeler, J. F. Price, W. A. Campbell, J. J. Marks, and Burt Hagedorn. Major S. M. Jones was spokesman for the visitors.
General Harrison, with his usual vigor, replied:
Gentlemen and my Ohio Friends—The State of my nativity has again placed me under obligations by this new evidence of the respect of her people. I am glad to meet you and to notice in the kind and interested faces into which I look a confirmation of the cordial remarks which have been addressed to me on your behalf. You each feel a personal interest and, I trust, a personal responsibility in this campaign. The interest which expresses itself only in public demonstrations is not of the highest value. The citizen who really believes that this election will either give a fresh impulse to the career of prosperity and honor in which our Nation has walked since the war, or will clog and retard that progress, comes far short of his duty if he does not in his own place as a citizen make his influence felt for the truth upon those who are near him. [Applause.] You come from a community that has recently awakened to the fact that beneath the soil which has long yielded bounteous harvests to your farmers there was stored by nature a great and new source of wealth. You, in common with neighboring communities in Ohio and with other communities in our State, have only partially realized as yet the increase in wealth that oil and natural gas will bring to them, if it is not checked by destructive changes in our tariff policy. This fact should quicken and intensify the interest of these communities in this contest for the preservation of the American system of protection. [Applause.]
It is said by some of our opponents that a protective tariff has no influence upon wages; that labor in the United States has nothing to fear from the competition from pauper labor; that in the contest between pauper labor and high priced labor pauper labor was always driven out. Do such statements as these fall in line with experiences of these workingmen who are before me? [Cries of "No, no!">[ If that is true, then why the legislative precautions we have wisely taken against the coming of pauper labor to our shores? It is because you know, every one of you, that in a contest between two rival establishments here, or between two rival countries, that that shop or that country that pays the lowest wages—and so produces most cheaply—can command the market. If the products of foreign mills that pay low wages are admitted here without discriminating duties, you know there is only one way to meet such competition, and that is by reducing wages in our mills. [Applause.] They seek to entice you by the suggestion that you can wear cheaper clothing when free access is given to the products of foreign woollen mills; and yet they mention also that now, in some of our own cities, the men, and especially the women, who are manufacturing the garments we wear are not getting adequate wages, and that among some of them there is suffering. Do they hope that when the coat is made cheaper the wages of the man or woman who makes it will be increased? The power of your labor organizations to secure increased wages is greatest when there is a large demand for the product you are making at fair prices. You do not strike for better wages on a falling market. When the mills are running full time, when there is a full demand at good prices for the product of your toil, and when warehouses are empty, then your organization may effectively insist upon increased wages. Did any of you ever see one of the organized efforts for better wages succeed when the mill was running on half time, and there was a small demand at falling prices in the market for the product? [Applause.] The protective system works with your labor organization to secure and maintain a just compensation for labor. Whenever it becomes true—as it is in some other countries—that the workingman spends to-day what he will earn to-morrow, then your labor organizations will lose their power. Then the workman becomes in very fact a part of the machine he operates. He cannot leave it, for he has eaten to-day bread that he is to earn to-morrow. But when he eats to-day bread that he earned last week or last year, then he may successfully resist any unfair exactions. [Applause.] I do not say that we have here an ideal condition. I do not deny that in connection with some of our employments the conditions of life are hard. But the practical question is this: Is not the condition of our working people on the average comparatively a great deal better than that of any other country? [Applause and cries of "Good! Good!">[
If it is, then you will carefully scan all these suggestions before you consent that the work of foreign workmen shall supply our market, now supplied by the products of the hands of American workmen. I thank you again. The day is threatening and cool, and I beg you to excuse further public speech. [Applause.]
At night 200 Pennsylvanians, who came to Indiana to aid in developing the natural gas industry, called upon General Harrison at his residence, under the direction of a committee composed of Capt. J. C. Gibney, J. B. Wheeler, and Geo. A. Richards. Their spokesman was Wm. McElwaine, a fellow-workman.