The Portland daily press., 1880-10-06
Labor and the Tariff.
The Neighbors of Western Congress
man Give Him Lesson.
Despatch to Chicago Tribune.

QUINCY, ILL, Sept. 29.-The Hon. James w.
Singleton, member of Congress from this dis
trict having urged definite free-trade doctrines
upon his hearers in a speech III this city last
Thursday, number of the manufacturers of
Quincy have joined in an open letter to him.
The signers are stove-foundry men, machine
men, manufacturers of paper, carriages, wag-
ons, ploughs, furniture. and the like, and rep
resent large amount of capital. They include
the bulk of the manufacturers of the city The
following is the letter:
To the Hon. James W. Singleton:-
Dear Sir,-In your recent speech in this city
we understood you to call on the farmers and
laborers to combine and demand of Congress
such legislation as would enable them to buy
in this country the goods of foreign manufac-
turers at such prices as the after can afford to
sell them for We deem it iot transcending
the bounds Of our political privilege to inquire
of you whether you are willing to follow this
advice to its legitimate consequences. What
suggestion have you to make to the farmers to
help them to extricate themselves from the di-
lemma in which the application of the doc
trine of your advice would speedily involve
them? Are you prepared to direct them to
|. convenient and profitable market for their
farm products when the results of 6your theory
shall have shut up the thousands Of shops,
mills, and factories of this country, driven
portion of our operatives and artisans to the
public domain, still further to swell our annu-
al agricultural production (Which you admit
is even now rapidly increasing every Year,
turned another portion of them into poor,
needy idlers, and consigned still another por-
tion to the list of paupers? Are you ready, in
view Of the natural dependence of different
industries upon each other, of the relations of
raw materials and of partly and wholly manu-
factured products, and of the rates of wages in
this country,-are you ready, in view of these
things to strike the balance-sheet and show
who gains and who loses by the plans you pro-
pose? 1t might startle you to find that your
advice had practically ruined those you aimed
to befriend, and had been friendly only to the
foreign manufacturer, of whom you now seem
to wish nothing more than to buy his products
cheap.
Fortunately we are not left merely to guess
what would be the result Of following your
advice. Such experience as we have had with
it in this country, coupled with the experience
of England in the last thirty years, proves
simply this That, if we make our ports free to
foreign manufacturers, the operatives of Eng
land must raise their wages from 10 to 30 per
cent, and those of the continent of Europe
from 80 to 100 per cent, or our American op-
eratives must lower theirs to the same extent.
This is equivalent to saying that American op-
eratives must seek other employment, for no.
body believes that the foreign operatives have
it in their power to raise their own wages, Are
you aware that, at this moment, there is roll
ing-mill company in this State, employing 700
men, which has for months been holding in
allegiance project for adding more buildings
and increasing their capacity to an extent that
will require 1900 men,-simply holding off to
see if their enterprise in its present form is to
be swamped by the adoption in this country of
the doctrine you advocated in your speech in
the park last Thursday?
For ourselves, we go SO far as to say that it
ought to be the policy of the government that
no State should be allowed to let out its con-
victs to labor on terms that would permit the
goods produced by them to come in damaging
competition with those produced by the civil
industrial classes. This is the doctrine of pro-
lection brought down to an illustration which
anybody can understand. 1t is well-known