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treason to tamper with it, but with the accession of power came 
consequent development of disregard of the Constitution as well as 
moral decadence of the leaders of the party.   With that party the 
sole object in view, the only goal aimed at, is success and 
continuance in power for the opportunity to raid the public 
Treasury and despoil the people by legalized robbery, at the sacrifice 
of all principle, morality, and justice.   This is seen in their course 
on the Philippine question, with the currency act, confirmed by 
their votes on the infamous Porto Rican bill, continued in the proviso 
now under discussion, and indicated in the proposed ship-subsidy 
scheme. Everywhere and at all times they hasten to bow down 
before syndicates and trusts, crying "We hear thy mandates and 
obey." The tentacles of the giant octopus trust are many and far-
reaching.   They go out to Idaho, and labor is throttled.   At the 
command of the Standard Oil Company the President sends his troops 
there, and martial law is supreme in a county where not a single act 
of violence or resistance to law can be proved against the miners 
there at work.   Wholesale arrests are made without warrants or 
process of law; men guilty of no crime are imprisoned in filthy barns 
and "bull pens," and kept there for months half fed, without medical 
care, with insufficient clothing, and not given a trial or hearing.   A 
single instance will illustrate hundreds of cases: A number of 
miners had decided to quit work under the conditions prevailing.   
They were summoned to a hall, surrounded by Federal soldiers, and 
the lieutenant in charge said to them, " I will give you ten minutes to 
think the matter over.   No one will be permitted to leave this hall until 
the men decide to go to work." The men declined to obey the order 
and were taken to prison. This is a condition that may prevail in 
Pennsylvania, in Ohio, in Michigan, in any State or Territory in the 
Union, if trust rule be not speedily checked.   The excitement caused 
at large through the nation by the exposure of conditions prevalent 
in Idaho became so great that the trusts saw that something must be 
done, so they circulated a petition in Shoshone County, asking the 
President to retain the troops there; that public safety demanded it; 
but no one would sign it.   Then was issued an order that "all 
people who refused to sign the petition should leave the county." Is 
not that freedom and personal liberty with a vengeance? Labor 
should be king.   It is labor that with every swing of time's 
pendulum builds up and increases the store of material 
achievement.   It is labor that makes the valleys and plains to 
blossom as the rose; that builds railroads and gathers the burdens 
they bear to teeming ports, and fill the ships leaving our shores 
with heavy-laden holds.   It is labor that clears our forests, digs our 
mines, builds our cities, tills our fields, and reaps our harvests. Labor 
gives voice to countless factories, and under its power the hills and 
mountains join in echoing song of new life and advanced prosperity.   
This being so, labor should share in the reward, and the nation 
builded and developed on a grand and magnificent Scale by its 
brawn and muscle should be a nation greeting and welcoming labor 
to a part in its uplift, and a promise of a peaceful, constant, and 
happy dwelling place within its borders.   [Applause.]     The power 
back of this effort to continue involuntary servitude of American 
seamen has in contemplation the downfall of organized labor and the 
speedy reduction of all labor to serfdom or to a "mild form of feudal 
customs." as one of their champions puts the phrase.   The Standard 
Oil Company is back of the Federal guns in Idaho, holding labor in 
involuntary servitude.   In Ohio, and I quote from an article 
published in the Forum, of Bucyrus, Ohio:
STANDARD OIL COMPANY AND SUNDAY WORK.   
The Standard Oil Company last week issued an order for its pampers to work on 
Sunday hereafter.   Some of them refused to obey the order, and when they went 
to work Monday morning they were discharged.
There they are striving to subjugate the workmen by compelling them 
to surrender their religious convictions and their manhood. This 
same company is prompting the support in this Chamber of. this 
proviso and is demanding the passage of the Hanna-Payne subsidy 
bill.   I am told that I am opposing the maritime laws of this 
Government by opposing this proviso.   If my interpretation of 
section 4598 be correct, if I read it aright, it ought to be opposed and 
legislated out of existence.   I oppose all manner of slavery or 
involuntary servitude, save as punishment for crime, wherever it is.   
In this bill we are making new laws for new territory, and I am in 
favor of weeding out and destroying every vestige of such flagrant 
violation of the thirteenth constitutional amendment as this proviso 
seeks to perpetuate.   [Applause.] I am in favor of the extension to the 
widest limit of the commerce of the United States.   I want to see the 
white sails and the smokestacks of our merchant marine going to 
every port in the whole world.   I will welcome any measure that 
will add to the number of American registered vessels and give 
employment to American seamen, and to such a bill, one that will do 
all this and at the same time benefit the agricultural and labor 
interests of my country, I will give all the energy and ability I may 
possess to secure its

passage.   But the Hanna-Payne iniquity is not such a bill.   It is a 
simple scheme to rob the Treasury for the benefit of the Standard Oil 
Company and its syndicated copartner.     Those who are arguing in 
its favor talk as though shipbuilding was an unknown or trifling 
industry in our country.   They seek to convince one that there is not 
half a dozen shipyards in the whole country; and yet there are over 
a score along the Atlantic coast, there are several on the Pacific 
seaboard, and along the Great Lakes you will find more than a dozen, 
where ocean-going steamships and others of enormous size and 
dimensions are created.   In shipyards of my own State steel 
steamships and others of over 6,000 tons burden each have been and 
are being constructed.   Then, too, in addition to the carrying capacity 
of these steamships, they are designed to tow enormous steel barges, 
each with cargo capacity equal to many ocean steamers.   It has not 
needed a Government subsidy as incentive for this immense 
shipbuilding, and it may be safely predicted that, as the demands of 
trade require, more and larger achievements along this line will 
result, and through private enterprise. Based upon the economic 
absurdity that a nation is made more prosperous by taxing the great 
mass of the people for the enrichment of the few - legalized robbery 
- the Hanna-Payne ship-subsidy bill proposes to levy a tax upon the 
people of $100,000,000, to be given by the cunningly worded 
provisions of the bill solely and exclusively to a few favored 
corporations, the controlling stockholders in which are the directors of 
the Standard Oil Company. It is an outrageous piece of class 
legislation, supported with the utmost aggressiveness by the 
influences of the trust-ridden Administration and a busy and most 
powerful lobby.   The party lash s being diligently applied and all the 
powers of the syndicates and combines are being employed in its 
behalf. Defeated in a former Congress because of the opposition of 
Speaker Reed, it comes up again; and every true servant of the 
people will be found arrayed against it. The bill professes "to 
promote the commerce and increase the foreign trade of the United 
States."   To say nothing of the discrimination against agriculture 
and labor, as well as the internal trade of the country, the provisions 
of the bill do not bear out the glowing promise of its title.   By its 
provisions relating to tonnage, speed, and number of trips, all sailing 
vessels and "tramp" steamers, so called, are discriminated against to the 
extent of almost barring them from receipt of any portion of the 
subsidy, and it is this class of vessels that keep freight rates down, 
and by their being shut out from competition rates will increase and 
both producer and comsumer suffer.   It is certain that the millions to 
be taken from the people by the continuation of war taxes and high 
tariff will go to a few shipowners, and it is not at all probable that 
any considerable portion of it would go back to the Amerilan 
people, either through lower rates or increased wage to the abori ng 
man.   While the bill apparently specifies in one paragraph that 
"one-fourth of crew shall be Americans," yet in the next comes the 
proviso, "unless the stated proportion of an American crew can not be 
reasonably obtained." At the taking of the last census there were 
employed 114,736 persons in "crews of all operating craft "in the 
United States; deducting the 58,556 employed on the lakes, only 58,180 
persons were engaged in foreign and coasting trade, and the 
proportion is no greater to-day, and these are not all native or 
naturalized Americans.   The bill is not in the interest of American 
seamen.   It is not in the interest of agriculture, for the granting of 
subsidy to a certain line of shipping means the lessening of 
competition and the consequent increase of freight rates on exports, 
which reduces the price paid to the farmers on every bushel of wheat, 
corn, and other grain raised by them, and what but loss to the 
farmer can result from such a course. The bill is designed and framed 
in the special interest of a ship-owning syndicate, and the principal 
beneficiary, under the peculiar wording of the bill, is the 
International Navigation Company, a company in which the 
Standard Oil people hold the controlling power. By the terms of the 
bill this company would receive annually for ten years, without 
increasing a particle its present employees, business, or carrying 
capacity, the enormous sum of 81,570,781.92. In addition to this the 
Government now pays to this company $485,673.60 annually for 
carrying the mails.   In contemplation of the forced passage of the 
subsidy bill the company now has other ships contracted for; so that 
if the bill does become a law, this one company will soon bo receiving 
a yearly subsidy of $2,707,318, to be paid by the people of the United 
States as a gratuity - a gratuity as far as the people are concerned 
- but the navigation company will be expected to turn over a share of 
its millions to the treasurer of the Republican campaign corruption 
fund.   [Applause.]                                                                                                  
No wonder there is no prospect of the repeal or amendment of the war-
revenue tax law; no wonder that pensions are cut down and claims 
delayed and rejected without just cause; no wonder that internal 
improvements are stopped and rivers and harbors neglected,

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