underestimated. It will require on the part of the Congress great labor and
care, and especially a broad and national contemplation of the subject and
a patriotic disregard of such local and selfish claims as are unreasonable
and reckless of the welfare of the entire country.
Under our present laws more than 4,000 articles are subject to duty. Many
of these do not in any way compete with our own manufactures, and many are
hardly worth attention as subjects of revenue. A considerable reduction can
be made in the aggregate by adding them to the free list. The taxation of
luxuries presents no features of hardship; but the necessaries of life used
and consumed by all the people, the duty upon which adds to the cost of
living in every home, should be greatly cheapened.
The radical reduction of the duties imposed upon raw material used in
manufactures, or its free importation, is of course an important factor in
any effort to reduce the price of these necessaries. It would not only
relieve them from the increased cost caused by the tariff on such material,
but the manufactured product being thus cheapened that part of the tariff
now laid upon such product, as a compensation to our manufacturers for the
present price of raw material, could be accordingly modified. Such
reduction or free importation would serve besides to largely reduce the
revenue. It is not apparent how such a change can have any injurious effect
upon our manufacturers. On the contrary, it would appear to give them a
better chance in foreign markets with the manufacturers of other countries,
who cheapen their wares by free material. Thus our people might have the
opportunity of extending their sales beyond the limits of home consumption,
saving them from the depression, interruption in business, and loss caused
by a glutted domestic market and affording their employees more certain and
steady labor, with its resulting quiet and contentment.
The question thus imperatively presented for solution should be approached
in a spirit higher than partisanship and considered in the light of that
regard for patriotic duty which should characterize the action of those
intrusted with the weal of a confiding people. But the obligation to
declared party policy and principle is not wanting to urge prompt and
effective action. Both of the great political parties now represented in
the Government have by repeated and authoritative declarations condemned
the condition of our laws which permit the collection from the people of
unnecessary revenue, and have in the most solemn manner promised its
correction; and neither as citizens nor partisans are our countrymen in a
mood to condone the deliberate violation of these pledges.
Our progress toward a wise conclusion will not be improved by dwelling upon
the theories of protection and free trade. This savors too much of bandying
epithets. It is a condition which confronts us, not a theory. Relief from
this condition may involve a slight reduction of the advantages which we
award our home productions, but the entire withdrawal of such advantages
should not be contemplated. The question of free trade is absolutely
irrelevant, and the persistent claim made in certain quarters that all the
efforts to relieve the people from unjust and unnecessary taxation are
schemes of so-called free traders is mischievous and far removed from any
consideration for the public good.
The simple and plain duty which we owe the people is to reduce taxation to
the necessary expenses of an economical operation of the Government and to
restore to the business of the country the money which we hold in the
Treasury through the perversion of governmental powers. These things can
and should be done with safety to all our industries, without danger to the
opportunity for remunerative labor which our workingmen need, and with
benefit to them and all our people by cheapening their means of subsistence
and increasing the measure of their comforts.
The Constitution provides that the President "shall from time to time give
to the Congress information of the state of the Union." It has been the
custom of the Executive, in compliance with this provision, to annually
exhibit to the Congress, at the opening of its session, the general
condition of the country, and to detail with some particularity the
operations of the different Executive Departments. It would be especially
agreeable to follow this course at the present time and to call attention
to the valuable accomplishments of these Departments during the last fiscal
year; but I am so much impressed with the paramount importance of the
subject to which this communication has thus far been devoted that I shall
forego the addition of any other topic, and only urge upon your immediate
consideration the "state of the Union" as shown in the present condition of
our Treasury and our general fiscal situation, upon which every element of
our safety and prosperity depends.
The reports of the heads of Departments, which will be submitted, contain
full and explicit information touching the transaction of the business
intrusted to them and such recommendations relating to legislation in the
public interest as they deem advisable. I ask for these reports and
recommendations the deliberate examination and action of the legislative
branch of the Government.
There are other subjects not embraced in the departmental reports demanding
legislative consideration, and which I should be glad to submit. Some of
them, however, have been earnestly presented in previous messages, and as
to them I beg leave to repeat prior recommendations.
As the law makes no provision for any report from the Department of State,
a brief history of the transactions of that important Department, together
with other matters which it may hereafter be deemed essential to commend to
the attention of the Congress, may furnish the occasion for a future
communication.
***
State of the Union Address
Grover Cleveland
December 3, 1888
To the Congress of the United States:
As you assemble for the discharge of the duties you have assumed as the
representatives of a free and generous people, your meeting is marked by an
interesting and impressive incident. With the expiration of the present
session of the Congress the first century of our constitutional existence
as a nation will be completed.
Our survival for one hundred years is not sufficient to assure us that we
no longer have dangers to fear in the maintenance, with all its promised
blessings, of a government rounded upon the freedom of the people. The time
rather admonishes us to soberly inquire whether in the past we have always
closely kept in the course of safety, and whether we have before us a way
plain and clear which leads to happiness and perpetuity.
When the experiment of our Government was undertaken, the chart adopted for
our guidance was the Constitution. Departure from the lines there laid down
is failure. It is only by a strict adherence to the direction they indicate
and by restraint within the limitations they fix that we can furnish proof
to the world of the fitness of the American people for self-government.
The equal and exact justice of which we boast as the underlying principle
of our institutions should not be confined to the relations of our citizens
to each other. The Government itself is under bond to the American people
that in the exercise of its functions and powers it will deal with the body
of our citizens in a manner scrupulously honest and fair and absolutely
just. It has agreed that American citizenship shall be the only credential
necessary to justify the claim of equality before the law, and that no
condition in life shall give rise to discrimination in the treatment of the
people by their Government.
The citizen of our Republic in its early days rigidly insisted upon full
compliance with the letter of this bond, and saw stretching out before him
a clear field for individual endeavor. His tribute to the support of his
Government was measured by the cost of its economical maintenance, and he
was secure in the enjoyment of the remaining recompense of his steady and
contented toil. In those days the frugality of the people was stamped upon
their Government, and was enforced by the free, thoughtful, and intelligent
suffrage of the citizen. Combinations, monopolies, and aggregations of
capital were either avoided or sternly regulated and restrained. The pomp
and glitter of governments less free offered no temptation and presented no
delusion to the plain people who, side by side, in friendly competition,
wrought for the ennoblement and dignity of man, for the solution of the
problem of free government, and for the achievement of the grand destiny
awaiting the land which God had given them.
A century has passed. Our cities are the abiding places of wealth and
luxury; our manufactories yield fortunes never dreamed of by the fathers of
the Republic; our business men are madly striving in the race for riches,
and immense aggregations of capital outrun the imagination in the magnitude
of their undertakings.
We view with pride and satisfaction this bright picture of our country's
growth and prosperity, while only a closer scrutiny develops a somber
shading. Upon more careful inspection we find the wealth and luxury of our
cities mingled with poverty and wretchedness and unremunerative toil. A
crowded and constantly increasing urban population suggests the
impoverishment of rural sections and discontent with agricultural pursuits.
The farmer's son, not satisfied with his father's simple and laborious
life, joins the eager chase for easily acquired wealth.
We discover that the fortunes realized by our manufacturers are no longer
solely the reward of sturdy industry and enlightened foresight, but that
they result from the discriminating favor of the Government and are largely
built upon undue exactions from the masses of our people. The gulf between
employers and the employed is constantly widening, and classes are rapidly
forming, one comprising the very rich and powerful, while in another are
found the toiling poor.
As we view the achievements of aggregated capital, we discover the
existence of trusts, combinations, and monopolies, while the citizen is
struggling far in the rear or is trampled to death beneath an iron heel.
Corporations, which should be the carefully restrained creatures of the law
and the servants of the people, are fast becoming the people's masters.
Still congratulating ourselves upon the wealth and prosperity of our
country and complacently contemplating every incident of change inseparable
from these conditions, it is our duty as patriotic citizens to inquire at
the present stage of our progress how the bond of the Government made with
the people has been kept and performed.
Instead of limiting the tribute drawn from our citizens to the necessities
of its economical administration, the Government persists in exacting from
the substance of the people millions which, unapplied and useless, lie
dormant in its Treasury. This flagrant injustice and this breach of faith
and obligation add to extortion the danger attending the diversion of the
currency of the country from the legitimate channels of business.
Under the same laws by which these results are produced the Government
permits many millions more to be added to the cost of the living of our
people and to be taken from our consumers, which unreasonably swell the
profits of a small but powerful minority.
The people must still be taxed for the support of the Government under the
operation of tariff laws. But to the extent that the mass of our citizens
are inordinately burdened beyond any useful public purpose and for the
benefit of a favored few, the Government, under pretext of an exercise of
its taxing power, enters gratuitously into partnership with these
favorites, to their advantage and to the injury of a vast majority of our
people.
This is not equality before the law.
The existing situation is injurious to the health of our entire body
politic. It stifles in those for whose benefit it is permitted all
patriotic love of country, and substitutes in its place selfish greed and
grasping avarice. Devotion to American citizenship for its own sake and for
what it should accomplish as a motive to our nation's advancement and the
happiness of all our people is displaced by the assumption that the
Government, instead of being the embodiment of equality, is but an
instrumentality through which especial and individual advantages are to be
gained.
The arrogance of this assumption is unconcealed. It appears in the sordid
disregard of all but personal interests, in the refusal to abate for the
benefit of others one iota of selfish advantage, and in combinations to
perpetuate such advantages through efforts to control legislation and
improperly influence the suffrages of the people.
The grievances of those not included within the circle of these
beneficiaries, when fully realized, will surely arouse irritation and
discontent. Our farmers, long suffering and patient, struggling in the race
of life with the hardest and most unremitting toil, will not fail to see,
in spite of misrepresentations and misleading fallacies, that they are
obliged to accept such prices for their products as are fixed in foreign
markets where they compete with the farmers of the world; that their lands
are declining in value while their debts increase, and that without
compensating favor they are forced by the action of the Government to pay
for the benefit of others such enhanced prices for the things they need
that the scanty returns of their labor fail to furnish their support or
leave no margin for accumulation.
Our workingmen, enfranchised from all delusions and no longer frightened by
the cry that their wages are endangered by a just revision of our tariff
laws, will reasonably demand through such revision steadier employment,
cheaper means of living in their homes, freedom for themselves and their
children from the doom of perpetual servitude, and an open door to their
advancement beyond the limits of a laboring class. Others of our citizens,
whose comforts and expenditures are measured by moderate salaries and fixed
incomes, will insist upon the fairness and justice of cheapening the cost
of necessaries for themselves and their families.
When to the selfishness of the beneficiaries of unjust discrimination under
our laws there shall be added the discontent of those who suffer from such
discrimination, we will realize the fact that the beneficent purposes of
our Government, dependent upon the patriotism and contentment of our
people, are endangered.
Communism is a hateful thing and a menace to peace and organized
government; but the communism of combined wealth and capital, the outgrowth
of overweening cupidity and selfishness, which insidiously undermines the
justice and integrity of free institutions, is not less dangerous than the
communism of oppressed poverty and toil, which, exasperated by injustice
and discontent, attacks with wild disorder the citadel of rule.
He mocks the people who proposes that the Government shall protect the rich
and that they in turn will care for the laboring poor. Any intermediary
between the people and their Government or the least delegation of the care
and protection the Government owes to the humblest citizen in the land
makes the boast of free institutions a glittering delusion and the
pretended boon of American citizenship a shameless imposition.
A just and sensible revision of our tariff laws should be made for the
relief of those of our countrymen who suffer under present conditions. Such
a revision should receive the support of all who love that justice and
equality due to American citizenship; of all who realize that in this
justice and equality our Government finds its strength and its power to
protect the citizen and his property; of all who believe that the contented
competence and comfort of many accord better with the spirit of our
institutions than colossal fortunes unfairly gathered in the hands of a
few; of all who appreciate that the forbearance and fraternity among our
people, which recognize the value of every American interest, are the
surest guaranty of our national progress, and of all who desire to see the
products of American skill and ingenuity in every market of the world, with
a resulting restoration of American commerce.
The necessity of the reduction of our revenues is so apparent as to be
generally conceded, but the means by which this end shall be accomplished
and the sum of direct benefit which shall result to our citizens present a
controversy of the utmost importance. There should be no scheme accepted as
satisfactory by which the burdens of the people are only apparently
removed. Extravagant appropriations of public money, with all their
demoralizing consequences, should not be tolerated, either as a means of
relieving the Treasury of its present surplus or as furnishing pretext for
resisting a proper reduction in tariff rates. Existing evils and injustice
should be honestly recognized, boldly met, and effectively remedied. There
should be no cessation of the struggle until a plan is perfected, fair and
conservative toward existing industries, but which will reduce the cost to
consumers of the necessaries of life, while it provides for our
manufacturers the advantage of freer raw materials and permits no injury to
the interests of American labor.
The cause for which the battle is waged is comprised within lines clearly
and distinctly defined. It should never be compromised. It is the people's
cause.
It can not be denied that the selfish and private interests which are so
persistently heard when efforts are made to deal in a just and
comprehensive manner with our tariff laws are related to, if they are not
responsible for, the sentiment largely prevailing among the people that the
General Government is the fountain of individual and private aid; that it
may be expected to relieve with paternal care the distress of citizens and
communities, and that from the fullness of its Treasury it should, upon the
slightest possible pretext of promoting the general good, apply public
funds to the benefit of localities and individuals. Nor can it be denied
that there is a growing assumption that, as against the Government and in
favor of private claims and interests, the usual rules and limitations of
business principles and just dealing should be waived.
These ideas have been unhappily much encouraged by legislative
acquiescence. Relief from contracts made with the Government is too easily
accorded in favor of the citizen; the failure to support claims against the
Government by proof is often supplied by no better consideration than the
wealth of the Government and the poverty of the claimant; gratuities in the
form of pensions are granted upon no other real ground than the needy
condition of the applicant, or for reasons less valid; and large sums are
expended for public buildings and other improvements upon representations
scarcely claimed to be related to public needs and necessities.
The extent to which the consideration of such matters subordinate and
postpone action upon subjects of great public importance, but involving no
special private or partisan interest, should arrest attention and lead to
reformation.
A few of the numerous illustrations of this condition may be stated.
The crowded condition of the calendar of the Supreme Court, and the delay
to suitors and denial of justice resulting therefrom, has been strongly
urged upon the attention of the Congress, with a plan for the relief of the
situation approved by those well able to judge of its merits. While this
subject remains without effective consideration, many laws have been passed
providing for the holding of terms of inferior courts at places to suit the
convenience of localities, or to lay the foundation of an application for
the erection of a new public building.
Repeated recommendations have been submitted for the amendment and change
of the laws relating to our public lands so that their spoliation and
diversion to other uses than as homes for honest settlers might be
prevented. While a measure to meet this conceded necessity of reform
remains awaiting the action of the Congress, many claims to the public
lands and applications for their donation, in favor of States and
individuals, have been allowed.
A plan in aid of Indian management, recommended by those well informed as
containing valuable features in furtherance of the solution of the Indian
problem, has thus far failed of legislative sanction, while grants of
doubtful expediency to railroad corporations, permitting them to pass
through Indian reservations, have greatly multiplied.
The propriety and necessity of the erection of one or more prisons for the
confinement of United States convicts, and a post-office building in the
national capital, are not disputed. But these needs yet remain answered,
while scores of public buildings have been erected where their necessity
for public purposes is not apparent.
A revision of our pension laws could easily be made which would rest upon
just principles and provide for every worthy applicant. But while our
general pension laws remain confused and imperfect, hundreds of private
pension laws are annually passed, which are the sources of unjust
discrimination and popular demoralization.
Appropriation bills for the support of the Government are defaced by items
and provisions to meet private ends, and it is freely asserted by
responsible and experienced parties that a bill appropriating money for
public internal improvement would fail to meet with favor unless it
contained items more for local and private advantage than for public
benefit.
These statements can be much emphasized by an ascertainment of the
proportion of Federal legislation which either bears upon its face its
private character or which upon examination develops such a motive power.
And yet the people wait and expect from their chosen representatives such
patriotic action as will advance the welfare of the entire country; and
this expectation can only be answered by the performance of public duty
with unselfish purpose. Our mission among the nations of the earth and our
success in accomplishing the work God has given the American people to do
require of those intrusted with the making and execution of our laws
perfect devotion, above all other things, to the public good.
This devotion will lead us to strongly resist all impatience of
constitutional limitations of Federal power and to persistently check the
increasing tendency to extend the scope of Federal legislation into the
domain of State and local jurisdiction upon the plea of subserving the
public welfare. The preservation of the partitions between proper subjects
of Federal and local care and regulation is of such importance under the
Constitution, which is the law of our very existence, that no consideration
of expediency or sentiment should tempt us to enter upon doubtful ground.
We have undertaken to discover and proclaim the richest blessings of a free
government, with the Constitution as our guide. Let us follow the way it
points out; it will not mislead us. And surely no one who has taken upon
himself the solemn obligation to support and preserve the Constitution can
find justification or solace for disloyalty in the excuse that he wandered
and disobeyed in search of a better way to reach the public welfare than
the Constitution offers.
What has been said is deemed not inappropriate at a time when, from a
century's height, we view the way already trod by the American people and
attempt to discover their future path.