The workingman's advocate. [volume] (Chicago [Ill.]) 1864-1877, 1870-07-09

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up the means of transformation in our evn
midst and 50 avoid the further cost Of trans
poratipn at once and forever.
If farmer had no well or barn on his
farm, and was obliged to haul his water two
miles each day from bis neighbours we'll, and
drive his cattle four miles every night to be
stalled in the barn of his neighbor to the
left, we should say to him. Fool, dig your
own well and build your own barn, and stop
this useless, wasting toll of transporting
your water and your cattle to and fro" I'll
be should answer, "NO, mine is an agricul- |
tural farm, and neighbors Brown and Smith |
dig wells and build barns much cheaper
than | can afford to; besides, how much
less labor it is to drive my cattle four miles,
once, than to build barn, and how much
cheaper to draw water two miles than to dig
a well )" they would answer him, ''true, it
costs you more for the first pail of water,
and the first days stalling Of your cattle,
but after that you are constantly saving by
having got rid Of your excessive cost Of
transportation" If be alleged that ''what
would not pay best at first would never pay
best at ALL" be would have borrowed the
whole wisdom of free trade.
We do not see what ground there is to
lament specially that European capitalists
have come into possession of our ships,
more than to grieve over the fact that they
own nearly all our railroads, and two-thirds
of our national debt. The decline in our
shipping began five years before the rebel
lion Mr.. Carey. in a work then published
predicted, on purely economical principles,
thar the nation which exports its bulky pro
ducts, on which the freights are large, and
receives in exchange therefor finished pro
ducts, IN which the freights are small, rela-
lively to the values, must pay the freights
both ways. The mere saving to the manu-
featuring nation frou this source alone
would soon buy all the means Of transporta-
ton required to carry on the commerce
whether they were ships, steamers, cars or
canals. When manufacturers and miners
stop, and their workmen are turned out of
employment the free traders say, ''let them
stop! 1t is because their work can be more
proftably employed in other kinds Of bust
ness" When American manufactures are
so built up, that our need of ocean trans
portation diminishes, or when British cruis-
ers compel American vessels to sell out to
British owners, or when for any reason we
stop building ships, why can not the free
traders say with the same nonchalance,
''Let them stop; it is because our capital
and labor pay better in other things" Ger
tainly there never have been ten years Of
our history in which the average condition
Of our working and producing classes, apart
from the sufferings of the war. have been
% good as during the past ten. In 1860,
after fourteen years Of peace aud free-trade,
the city government Of Philadelphia adver-
tised for q hundred men to cnt stone on the
highway at sixty cents a day, and six thou
sand otfered-most Of them unemployed
mechanics aud skilled artizans. In 1857
soup houses were donating bones and wa
tered grease to the unemployed working
men of all our large cities, and Illinois
farmers were burning their corn for fuel,
because it would not bring ten cents per
bushel on the prairies or twenty-five in Chi
cago, while light cattle were selling in Chi
cago at two to two and half cents pound.
While such was the condition Of northern
labor, Mr.. Pollard describes the mass Of
southern slave laborers as unfit to appear
in the presence of women because of theil
nakedness. Instead e this, we now hav,
northern S0:Esitssgg men receiving, says a re
cent tres trade article in the North Amer
eN RevietO, Salaries that professiona
men could not command before the war,
mechanics demanding, not public soup, bu
a reduction of their hours of labor, the late
slave husband sending bis children to schoo
AM sustaining his wife at home, and an ad
ver isement for one hundred. men to Gu
{ stone on the Philadelphia highways at twic
, sixty cents that would not attract man.