Читать книгу Speeches of Benjamin Harrison, Twenty-third President of the United States - Benjamin Harrison - Страница 24

INDIANAPOLIS, JULY 31.

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The last delegation in July came from Henry County, Indiana, two thousand strong, headed by C. S. Hernley, W. H. Elliott, Hon. Eugene Bundy, Judge Mark E. Forkner, A. Abernathy, A. D. Osborn, O. P. M. Hubbard, David Luellen, O. B. Mooney, and Captain Armstrong, all of New Castle. Gen. William H. Grose was their orator.

In his response General Harrison at this early day out-lined his views upon reciprocal trade relations with South American nations—views which were afterwards successfully, and with great profit to our people, put into effect through the celebrated reciprocity treaties with Brazil, Venezuela and other countries.

Repeated outbursts of enthusiasm punctured his address. He said:

Comrade Grose and my Henry County Friends—If we have here any discouraged statesman who takes a despondent view of the future of the country, I think he would recover his hopefulness if he could look, once in a while, into the face of an audience like this. [Applause.]

You came from a county that has been a bulwark of republicanism since the party was organized. You had an early element in your population that has done much to promote your material interests, and, much more, to lift up those principles that relate to the purity of the home and to the freedom of men. The Friends, who have been and are so large and so influential an element in your population and in the counties surrounding it, are a people notable for the purity of their home life and for their broad and loving sympathy with all men. They were the early enemies of slavery, and they have always naturally been the strength of the Republican party in the community where they reside. Your spokesman has expressed your continued interest in the party to which some of you gave the confidence of your matured powers and some of you the early devotion of your youth. The Republican party has accomplished for the country a great work in the brief period of its life. It preserved the Nation by a wise, courageous and patriotic administration. What that means for you and your posterity, what it means for the world, no man can tell. It would have been a climax of disaster for the world if this Government of the people had perished. The one unsolved experiment of free government was solved. We have demonstrated the capacity of the people and a citizen soldiery to maintain inviolate the unity of the Republic. [Applause.]

There remain now, fortunately, chiefly economic questions to be thought of and to be settled. We refer to the great war, not in any spirit of hostility to any section or any class of men, but only because we believe it to be good for the whole country that loyalty and fidelity to the flag should be honored. [Great applause.] It was one of the great triumphs of the war, a particular in which our war was distinguished from all other wars of history, that we brought the vanquished into the same full, equal citizenship under the law that we maintained for ourselves.

In all the addresses which have been made to me there has been some reference to the great question of the protection of our American industries. I see it upon the banners which you carry. Our party stands unequivocally, without evasion or qualification, for the doctrine that the American market shall be preserved for our American producers. [Great applause.] We are not attracted by the suggestion that we should surrender to foreign producers the best market in the world. Our sixty millions of people are the best buyers in the world, and they are such because our working classes receive the best wages. But we do not mean to be content with our own market. We should seek to promote closer and more friendly commercial relations with the Central and South American States. [Applause.] And what is essential to that end? Regular mails are the first condition of commerce.

The merchant must know when his order will be received, and when his consignment will be returned, or there can be no trade between distant communities. What we need, therefore, is the establishment of American steamship lines between our ports and the ports of Central and South America. [Applause.] Then it will no longer be necessary that an American minister, commissioned to an American State, shall take an English ship to Liverpool to find another English ship to carry him to his destination. We are not to be frightened by the use of that ugly word "subsidy." [Laughter.] We should pay to American steamship lines a liberal compensation for carrying our mails, instead of turning them over to British tramp steamships. [Applause.] We do not desire to dominate these neighboring governments; we do not desire to deal with them in any spirit of aggression. We desire those friendly political, mental, and commercial relations which shall promote their interests equally with ours. We should not longer forego those commercial relations and advantages which our geographical relations suggest and make so desirable. If you will excuse me from further public speech I will be glad to take by the hand my Henry County friends. [Cheers.]

Mr. Harrison arrived home—after the Henry County reception in University Park—in time to welcome his guest, Gen. R. A. Alger of Michigan, the distinguished gentlemen meeting for the first time. In the afternoon several hundred of the Henry County visitors, escorted by the local clubs, marched to the Harrison residence to pay their respects to General Alger.

In introducing his guest General Harrison said:

My Fellow-citizens—I have had the pleasure to-day to receive in my own home a distinguished citizen of a neighboring State; distinguished not only for his relation to the civil administration of affairs in his State, but also as one of those conspicuous soldiers contributed by Michigan to the armies of the Union when our national life was in peril. I am sure you will be glad to make broader the welcome I have given him, and to show him that he has a warm place in the affections of our Indiana people. Let me present to you General Alger of Michigan. [Prolonged applause.]

General Alger responded as follows:

Gentlemen—I thank you very much for this cordial greeting. I thank you very kindly, General Harrison, for the pleasant words you have said of me personally. I wish to say—as you would know if you lived in Michigan—that I am not a speechmaker. I composed a few speeches some weeks ago, and General Harrison has been delivering them ever since. [Laughter.] After reading his speeches carefully, each one of them a gem of concentrated thought, I have made up my mind that the Chicago Convention made no mistake. [Applause.] We have not held any post-mortem in our State. We are glad that we have such a gallant candidate, a man in whose composition no flaw can be found, in whose life no act or word can be adversely criticised. We are as proud in Michigan of your candidate—who is our candidate also—as we could possibly be were any other man in the universe named. We are all Harrison men in Michigan now; and the place he has in our hearts is just as warm as though he lived within our own borders. [Applause.] You Hoosiers have no patent upon this. [Applause.] The people of the United States have a great crisis before them. The question as to the life and prosperity of our industrial institutions is at stake. We have, as we have always had, since this country was worth caring for, the opposition of the English Government.

Speeches of Benjamin Harrison, Twenty-third President of the United States

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