, 1877-09-30

| clothed, while that class Of worRngmeu
whose wages we're not increased would INC
it impossible to buy bread, and clothes, ano
fuel at SIX times their former cost.
1t is reasonable to conclude, then, that Il
one class of workingmen or trades-unlonf
could secure SIX times their present wages,
| then all other classes could do the
same. This would include all the wages
class, whether in the foundry, or fac-
tory, or commercial counting house, or
employed in the streets, in the Transports
ton business, or the business Of farming
or plowing Then all the "princely fare,
and pictures, and silk dresses, and pianos,
and CIGARS and liquors, and other luxuries
which the Communist orator held up before
tha covetous hod-carrier, would increase SIX
fold IN price, and they would be rs far be-
yond the reach of the hod-carrier then Us
they are now. Everything would be on the
same plane after the common multiplication
by slS. Wherein would be the advantage to
tho workingn,an? The country tried the
policy Of multiplying things by two for n
good many years. We were able to keep it
up for awhile because war incl cased con-
sumption aud diminished production, and
we borrowed from foreign countries the
difference. But even this double infla-
ton led us finally to general
condition of commercial collapse, to panic,
and to long years Of depression, during which
we have been endeavoring to come down to
a proper basis. How long would Il six
fold imitation last and where would it end?
are questions which may be answered by our
experience in the double imitation.
But this process Of intlation by combina-
tion would Immediately precipitate national
disaster. Unless the farm -laborers combined
similarly, they would bo thrown out of en-
ployment and starve, for all exchanges
which the farmer takes would cost him six
times. what they did before. It would bo
necessary, therefore, for the farmers and
farm-laborers to combine for skiold more.
Then farm-produce,- wheat, corn,
bartey, oats, rye, cattle, hogs, cotton, rice,
sugar,-an would command sir times rs
much as before. This would instantly shut
of every foreign market. The Minnesota
farmer, or Louisiana planter, or Texas stock
raiser who finds market abroad for his
wheat, or cotton, or beef ut the present
price would he thenceforth excluded from q
foreign market Unnecessarily holding his stuff
atsi1 times that price. Sowith every branch of
But all observing men admit
That the great trouble now comes from the
lack Of demand for the production of the
country. This is the cause of relatively low |
wages and hard times. The proposition to
combine and increase all wages skiold is n |
to reduce the demand still more |
Now We have home consumption and foreign |
consumption, but the proposed increase of !
wages would limit lis to houe consumption !
loue. Tho farmers would have to reduce
heir crops and the manufacturers close
llcir mills aud foundries, whereby the num-
Ter Of unemployed men would be increased |
nd the extent of suffering would be en-
arged, Notwithstanding the fact that wages
you'd be nominally six times what they were
'efore. Yet this is the kind of advice which
he demagogues and Communistic agitators
'reach to the workingmen, imposing on
heir Ignorance and pandering to their
upidity