Wilson, of West Virginia, Any tariff bill,
however low the schedules may be, is simply
a license, issued to the au
thorizing them to plunder everybody else who
has to buy in the home market.
(3.) The Omaha Platform was not. the
first adopted by the People’s Party. Poor
Mr. Howard’s memory seems to be failing
him dismally. The first People’s Party Plat
form was adopted in St. Louis in 1891. In
the main, it followed the Ocala Platform of
the Farmer’s Alliance in 1889. In the Ocala
Platform, a demand was made that the neces
saries of life, which the poor man must have
to live, should be put on the free list. With
out exception, every subsequent platform has
reaffirmed those which went before. There
fore it is true that Populism has always stood
for untaxed necessaries of life.
(4.) No, it isn’t true. On the contrary,
every platform upon which I have ever run
for any office, contained a reaffirmation reach
ing back to the old Ocala Platform. In every
one of my speeches, the tariff has been fiercely
denounced as an infernal system of robbing
the many in the interests of the few.
(5.) I fully agree with Champ Clark. In
theory, he is absolutely right; but I also agree
with Mr. Henry, of Texas, that, so far as this
generation is concerned, absolute free trade is
a dream. The doctrine has become so inter
woven in the warp and woof of American life,
that it can only by slow degrees be extracted,
without destruction to the web.
(6.) It doesn’t at all matter that Mr.
