Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 5.djvu/80

56 have been hooted down as a fool or denounced as a traitor at heart, trying to cripple the financial strength of the Government by throwing suspicion upon the good faith of those who brought forth its financial measures. The people did not think of political economy; they thought of battle, of victory, of saving the republic. It may have struck many in those days that of all classes of society the manufacturing class was the only one which, for the burdens all had to bear, received compensation by law. There was the farmer. He had sent his sons to the field of war. He had to hire help to till his acres and to harvest his crops. He, too, suffered under the scarcity of labor. He, too, had to pay higher, far higher prices for all he had to buy. He, too, had to pay unaccustomed taxes, direct and indirect, that handicapped him in the struggle for existence. But he did not ask for legislation to compensate him, nor did he receive any. He sighed and groaned under the ever-increasing load; but, as to compensation, he had to be content to take his chances, and he took them like a man and a patriot. So the merchant, the professional man, the laborer,—no compensation by law for them: they, too, had to take their chances. And not only did they bear their own burdens, but every one of them, paying for what he had to buy the prices largely enhanced by the war tariff, contributed his share to compensate the manufacturers and keep them harmless.

Well did the people know that unscrupulous men took greedy advantage of the necessities of the Government to enrich themselves at the public cost; that enormous frauds were practiced; that manufacturers in large numbers had rushed to Congress to obtain “legislative favors” in the shape of protective duties far beyond the measure to which the rule of compensation gave them any color of right, and in the hurry of the moment received them; that unscrupulous avarice was rapidly accumulating