The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1880-03-27
A Stirring Appeal.
I'VE OF PRESIDENT OF WISCONSIN EDIToRs
AND PUBLISHERS ASSOCIATION.
MIR uEEp Fab |

officE OF PRESIDENT OF WISCONSIN EDrToRs
AND PUBLISHERS ASSOCIATION.
10 Senators and Members of Congress-;
~ becomes my painful duty to ad-
uress you few lines, and if you will
pay attention and allow the ideas here
~ advanced to gently enter your sew
olal systems without the aid of surgi-
Gal operation or shotgun, it will be a
cussed sight more than we have right
10 expect. At the annual meeting of
tne Wisconsin Editors and Publishers
association held last June at Oshkosh,
AFTER the members had been formally
admitted to the Insane Asylum, they
passed the following whereases AID
resolutions, between free lunches and
llplcnics, and made me the humble in
strument of torture to bring the afore-
lsWd whereases and resolutions to your
'1sspe'ution:s
I WHEREAS, Thetype foundries of the United
States have formed combination for the pur-
pose of imposing such terms and regulations
as they choose upon trade; and
WHEREAS, They have been and are using
their organizations to the great disadvantage
and injury of their patrons, the printers and
publishers of the country; and
WHEREAS, The ordinary and permanent
difficulties in the way of obtaining type from
foreign countries are such as to afford ample
protection to American type foundries with
out the addition Of the safeguard of a tariff
therefore,
RsSoLDed, That the just interests of the print.
ers and publishers of the United States re-
quire that the tariff on type metal and type be
removed.
Resotved, That the representatives of Wis
consin in Congress are urgently requested to
use their influence ard efforts TO secure a
speedy abolition of such tariff.
Now that you have read the resolu-
tions, 1t is supposable case that you
will feel that your next duty is to throw
them into the waste-basket. In the
name of forty million people, be the
same more or less, l ask you not to
lose your cud, but ruminate, as it
were, and think over the highway rob-
berry that is being practiced upon your
unsophisticated constituents by the
type founders, who are laundering the
newspapers. As it is now they stand
in the entrance of the editorial sane
tum and take the money that comes in
on subscriptions, and only allow the
publisher the cordwood and farm
produce. BY the protection your
alleged honorable body affords
them in the way of tariff, they
grapple the throat of every news
paper in America, and say, "Keno,"
while the newspaper publisher can
only return his chips to the dealer and
say go, dash itr' Every article that
is used by a newspaper man, except
secondhand ulster overcoats and liver,
is protected by tariff that makes the
cold chills run up his spine.
Another thing that the Association
did not pass any resolutions about. but
which they probably will at the next
meeting, if there are enough of them
left outside of the poor-house to meet
before they meet on that beautiful shore,
is the recent action of the manufac-
turers of paper, who are endeavoring to
screw down the lid of the newspaper
coffin which the type-founders are pre-
pairing for the grave. In the last three
months, by their own sweet will, they
have run the price of paper up almost
one hundred per cent. There is moth
ing to prevent them from doing it, as
foreign manufactured paper is kept out
of the country by the tariff. Every ar
ticle that goes into the construction of
rag-paper, except Eastwood, sweat and
water, has a tariff on it. The soda,
asafetida and blue-mass, or whatever
is used to deodorize undershirts and
cast-off drawers so that they will smell
good in newspaper, has corn on it
in the shape of tariff, so that the pa
per-manufacturing, three-card monte
chaps have an excuse to bleed newspa-
pers to the last drop. What the news
papers want, and they believe it is not
an unreasonable demand, is the remov-
al of the tariff on type, on rags, on pa
per, and on all chemicals used in the
manufacture of paper. In a tariff on
rags (if there is no tariff on rags you had
better put one on, unless you remove
the tariff on the rest of the stuff; if a
tariff is q good thing you can't have too
much of it), for instance, whom do you
protectp Nobody but gutter-snipe rag
pickers and old maids who save up
rags to buy snuff, and tin peddlers who
trade tin dippers and swimmers occa-
sionally for flour sack full of bad
smelling rags. Are the rag-pickers and
old maids your principal constituents
The newspapers of the country be-
lieve that they are entitled to some
consideration at your hands. They are
in many instances the instruments
through which many of you have at
tanned the positions you now hold, and
they never have got much of anything
from you except Patent Office reports
and agricultural documents. They have
sat up nights for you, and done dirty
work that may bar them out of all par
in the chariot races in the
golden streets of the New Jerusalem.
and now they demand that you pro-
tect them from the ravages of the type
and paper-making grasshop-
pers, before it is everlastingly too late.
Not being one of the dashed liter
airy fellers" so touchingly alluded to
by the great Senator Simon Cameron,
this epistle to you Corinthians may be a
little raw, and not as polished as it
should be, but it tries to represent the
feelings of the newspaper men of Wis
consin in language that the wayfaring
man, though diabolical idiot, can un-
derstand, and it means business. The
are desperate, and, while
they don't want to go on the war-path,
they feel that they have been burdened
about enough by the different tribes OF