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| Groton Avenue west from Main Street in 1900. Opera House is the large building on right. Grip's Historical Souvenir of Cortland, photo by Hyatt. |
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| Sen. William P. Frye of Maine |
The
Cortland Democrat, Friday,
December 2, 1887.
Frye on Exaggeration.
Senator
Wm. P. Frye, of Maine, delivered a speech in the Cortland Opera House on
Tuesday evening, Nov. 1st last, to a very large audience. The first part of his
speech was given entirely to abusing President Cleveland. The President of
course can stand the abuse, and undoubtedly cares very little about it. But Mr.
Frye made some statements at the time that we did not believe, and we have
taken the trouble to obtain the facts which prove that gentleman to be a
deliberate falsifier.
Mr.
Frye drew a very vivid picture of the case of Thomas S. Hopkins, who was already
receiving a pension of fifty dollars a month, and who asked for a special act
to pay him arrearages amounting to about $9,000. Mr. Frye told the reason given
by the President, for vetoing the bill for arrearages, which Hopkins, who was
on the ground, had managed to lobby through Congress. We copy his precise words
as given in the speech published in the Standard:
"A
bill was introduced in Congress to grant arrearages
to Thomas Hopkins, and the most careful
examination of his case was made by both
Houses. The result was that the bill was
passed and was sent to the President for his
signature. Was it signed? No. And what do you
suppose was the reason given for his refusal? Because
Thomas Hopkins had never been mustered into the service. Had
never gone through the form of being mustered
in that he was a soldier, that he had fought
for the Union, that he had been wounded in its
service and that his life was a wreck as a result of that service and his family in poverty was never questioned, but that he was never mustered in, when there was no officer provided to muster him in, was sufficient ground for the refusal of this President to grant him pension arrearages."
Now this is all well enough probably to tell
the boys here who like to hear a good liar talk, but undoubtedly the veto itself
would be considered the best evidence. The reader will please note that the reason given by the
President for the veto, is entirely different from the reason Mr. Frye said the
President gave. Here is the veto entire:
To the Senate:
I hereby return without my approval Senate
bill number one hundred and eighty three, entitled "An act for the relief
of Thomas S. Hopkins, late of Company C., Sixteenth Maine Volunteers.''
This solder was enrolled in the Army June 2,
1862, and discharged June 30, 1865. He was sent to the Government Hospital September
30, 1863, and thereupon transferred to the Invalid Corps.
He filed his declaration for a pension in November,
1880, alleging that while in the service he contracted malarial fever and chronic
diarrhea, and was seized with convulsions, suffering from great general
debility.
A pension of fifty dollars a month was
granted to him in June, 1881, dating from the time of filing his application,
which sum he has been receiving up to the present time and continues to
receive.
This bill proposes to remove the limitation fixed
by the law of 1879 prescribing the date prior to
which an application for pension must
be filed in order to entitle the claimant to draw the pension allowed from the
time of his discharge from the service.
If this bill should become a law if would entitle
the claimant to about nine thousand dollars of back pension. This
is claimed upon the ground that the soldier was so sick from the time of the
passage of the act creating the limitation up to the date allowed him to avail
himself of the privileges of the act that he could not file his claim.
I think the limitation thus fixed a very wise
one and that it should not, in fairness to other claimants, be
relaxed for causes not mentioned in the statute, nor should the door be opened
to applications of this kind.
The beneficiary named in this bill had fifteen
years after the accruing of his claim and before it is alleged that he was
incapacitated, within which he might have filed his application and entitled
himself to the back pension now applied for.
The facts here presented come so far short
of furnishing a satisfactory excuse for his delay that, in my judgment, the
discrimination asked in his favor should not be granted.
GROVER
CLEVELAND.
EXECUTIVE
MANSION, June 19, 1886.
Hopkins
was receiving a pension of $50 per month, and in fact had already drawn $4,200
from the treasury since November, 1880, the time of filing his application, but
not satisfied with this he wanted to take about $9,000 more from the treasury
which the law would not allow and so he asks Congress to pass a special act in
order to allow him to gobble this money. But whether there was justice in his
claim or not, is not what we started out to prove. We simply intended to show that Mr. Frye deliberately lied about
the reason given for the veto and we have proved it by the facts.
Again
Mr. Frye charged that the President vetoed a bill for the relief of the wife and
seven children of Michael O'Brien. Here is what Senator Frye said about this case and we copy from the speech as published:
"Through
some technicality, the Pension Bureau could not grant it and she appealed to Congress,
that great court of appeals to which every person in this nation can come with
any trouble. It was a clear case and the bill unanimously passed both Houses and
was sent to the President. In the course of three or four days the bill came back
vetoed, and for what reason do you think? Will you believe it? He said that there
was no evidence to show that that woman was ever married to that man. Just think
of that!"
No
such bill ever came before the President and consequently he could not veto it and
of course could not give the reasons as signed by Senator Frye. The facts are
as follows, which any one can find by examining the Congressional Record.
Senator Hale, of Maine, introduced a bill last year for the relief of
the heirs of Michael O'Brien, who was a soldier in the U. S. Army, in 1838, but
it did not pass the Senate. It never came before the President in any shape.
Mr.
Frye cannot be excused on the ground of want of information or ignorance,
because he is a man of fair intelligence and as a Senator of the United States was
in a position to know what he was talking about. Giving him credit therefore for
the possession of ordinary common sense and a average ability, the most charitable
construction that can be put upon his performance in the Cortland Opera House, on
the occasion referred to is, that he lied deliberately and most willfully.
TARIFF
MONOPOLY.
A
Few of the Industries Which the Tariff Enables to Combine.
(From the Philadelphia Record.)
The people of the United States are daily told by the advocates of
protection that the tariff system does not need any reform, and that any change
in it should be in the direction of higher rates of duty. This daring assertion
is made in presence of the fact that under the operation of the tariff
legitimate competition is stilled and the trade in many leading necessaries of
living controlled absolutely by monopolies. Here are some of the monopolistic
creations and outgrowths of our iniquitous tariff system which have oppressed
and plundered the people of this country through the power which the tariff has
conferred upon them:
The Bessemer steel monopoly.
The Crucible Steel Trust.
The Nail Association.
The coal combination.
The coke combination.
The Lumber Trust.
The Sugar Trust.
The salt combination.
The Flour-Bag Trust.
The Maine sardine fraud.
The Wall-paper Trust.
The window-glass combination.
The barb-wire ring.
The Lead Trust.
The School Slate Trust.
The sheet-zinc monopoly.
The Russia sheet-iron monopoly.
This
does not by any means exhaust the number of tariff-fed monopolies, but the above
will enable consumers in the United States to form a very clear conception of the
extent to which they have been plundered by a system of legal fraud and
oppression. Let the American workingmen carefully scan this partial list and
say how much protection there is in it for them. While the prices of many of
the necessaries and comforts of their families have been cruelly enhanced by
this system, they must sell their daily labor for what it will bring in the
open market. Millions of people are plundered in order to minister to the greed
of a few monopolies.
American Industry vs. Monopoly Tariff and Boodie Belden.
Many
things which the manufacturers of Cortland might accomplish to their advantage by
acting together in a body, will never be effected unless they unite their
efforts to this end. The producers and dealers in fuel and metals, used by manufacturers
in their business as raw materials, combine to keep up the prices of those commodities.
The
prices of nearly all kinds of hardware are fixed by a combination of producers
and dealers. The tariff being so high as to prevent foreigners from
competition, thus leaving the markets in the control of the combinations [sic].
Unless these combinations are soon broken up all manufacturers and business men
will eventually be compelled to form combinations of their own for self protection
or be driven to the wall by them.
These
oppressive combinations could not exist were they not protected and upheld in
their monopolies by the tariff which practically excludes the products of
foreign producers from competition with them in our markets, while it excludes
us from foreign markets by the burdens and restraints imposed upon our trade
with foreign countries and prevents the sale of our surplus to foreign customers,
first by crippling our foreign commerce and second by the retributive legislation
begotten by our exorbitant duties on imported goods, thus destroying our foreign
commerce and merchant marine, while it fosters crushing monopolies against all
but the favored few.
Let
us see how this high tariff affects the farmer, for upon his prosperity ours
largely depends. The farmer is now compelled to pay for his goods a price equal
to the cost of production with tariff added on most everything he buys. This is
obviously the case with all foreign productions; it is also practically true of
native productions because the combinations by which all home competition is
stifled and neutralized, fix the prices of their products as high as possible, that
is, at the cost of production with the tariff added. If the prices were made higher
than this, foreign productions would then successfully compete in the market with
those of home manufacture. If placed a little lower foreign wares are excluded from the market and the
combinations fix their prices and limit their productions at their own sweet
will. If the market becomes overstocked with any commodity they have only to
get up a strike among their operatives who are made to bear all the blame, and wait
for an advance in prices which is sure to come for the market is absolutely
under the control of the combination, and the operators make more by the
advance in prices occasioned by the strikes thus instigated by them, than they
could have done had they continued producing. And the poor operative and
laboring man alone bear the loss.
More
than $200,000 is annually taken out of the profits of the manufacturers of Cortland
in the monopoly tariff for they are not among the class favored by it. Not less
than fifty per cent is added to the cost of much of the iron, steel and other
metals used by them as raw materials in the production of their goods. The
carpets used in the manufacture of chairs pays [sic] a tariff tax of over one
hundred per cent. The materials used in trimming carriages pays [sic] an average
duty of over seventy per cent and the money thus taken from us goes to swell
the enormous surplus hoarded in the U. S. Treasury, thereby contracting the volume
of the currency in circulation and depressing our business. So long as the government
needed this money to pay its debts we bore these exactions with patience. But
patience long since ceased to be a virtue and is now become a vice. We have
been skinned without kicking long enough. Let us grapple with this question at
once and bring it to a solution compatible with our just rights and interests.
It
seems to be the irony of fate that James Boodie Belden should have been elected
to Congress from this district by a majority of more than 8,000 upon the issue
that the legalized robbery and abominable injustice of the monopoly tariff
should be continued. The detestable false pretense that American industry is thereby
protected adds insult to this injury. Cut down the enormous sum annually taken
from us by the monopoly tariff, at least one half, and with the half remaining
to us we will effectually promote American industry in a practical and efficient
manner.
Let
the manufacturers of Homer and Cortland organize and combine. Let each one examine
the tariff and compute for himself the amount he annually contributes to increase the hoard in an overflowing treasury
and swell the profits of greedy monopolists, then meet together [to] compare notes,
digest and adopt a plan of action, then act unitedly and we shall be certain of
accomplishing our purpose. Take this matter out of the domain of party politics
if possible and decide as business men.
Who
will be first to move in this matter? It is far more important than any one of
us at present imagines.
MANUFACTURER.
[Page Two, Editorials.]
Johann
Most, the Anarchist, who has been on trial this past week in New York for
inciting his followers to riot, was found guilty by the jury.
The
Court of Appeals has reversed the judgment of Judge Barrett and the General Term,
and granted a new trial to Jacob Sharpe, the briber. This will be no surprise to
lawyers, who never believed the conviction could stand for the reason that
evidence was admitted on the trial that ought not to have been admitted.
No one doubts Sharpe's guilt, but all will agree that he is entitled to a fair
trial. All the Judges of the Court of Appeals voted for a reversal of the
conviction and the granting of a new trial. Judge Danforth wrote the opinion.
Recommended:
William P. Frye: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_P._Frye
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