The Manitowoc pilot. [volume] (Manitowoc, Wis.) 1859-1932, 1880-03-04
PECK'S PROCLAMATION.
OFFICE OF PRESIDENT OF WISCONSIN
EDITORS AND PUBLISHERS AssoCIA-
TIoN.
MILWAUKEE. Feb. 20. 1880.


viii pay attention and allow the ideas
herein advanced to gently enter your
several systems without the aid of sur
gical operation or a shot gun, it will be
cussed sight more than we have right
to expect. At the annual meeting of the
Wisconsin Editors and Publishers As
ISOLATION, held last June at Oshkosh,
after the members had been formally ad-
mitted to the Insane Asylum, they passed
the following whereases and resolutions,
between free lunches and picnics, and
made me the humble instrument of tor
ture to bring the aforesaid whereases
and resolutions to your attention:
WHEREAS, The type foundries of the
United States have formed combination
for the purpose OF imposing such terms
and regulations as they choose upon
trade, and
WHEREAS, They have been and are
using their organization to the great dis
advantage and injuries of their patrons,
the printers and publishers of the coun-
try, and
ent difficulties in the way of obtaining
type from foreign countries are such as
to afford ample protection to American
type foundrles without the addition of
the safeguard of tariff, therefore
ReSOlUed, That the just interests of
the printers and publishers of the United
States require that the tariff on type
metal and type be removed.
ResotUed, That the Representatives of
Wisconsin in Congress are urgently re-
quested to use their influence and efforts
to secure speedy abolition of such tariff
Now that you have read the resolu-
tions, it is supposable case that you
will feel that your next duty is to throw
them into the waste basket. In the name
of 40, 900, 900 people be the same more
or less. ask you not to lose your cud,
but ruminate, as it were, and think over
the highway robbery that is being prac-
ticed upon your unsophisticated consti-
tuents by the Type Founders, who are
laundering the newspapers. As it is now
| they stand in the entrance of the editor
ial sanctum and take the money that
comes in on subscription, and only allow
the publisher the cord wood and farm
produce. By the protection your alleged
honorable body affords them, in the way
of tariff, they grapple the throat of every
newspaper in America, and say "Keno,"
while the newspaper publisher can only
return his chips to the dealer and say
go, hell" Every article that is used by
newspaper man, excepting second hand
ulster overcoats and liver, is protected by
a 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 manufacturers Of paper.
who are endeavoring to screw down the
lid OF the newspaper coffin which the
type founders are preparing for the
grave. In the last three months by their
own sweet will, they have run the price
of paper up almost a hundred per cent.
There is nothing to prevent them from
doing it, as foreign manufactured paper
is kept out of the country by the tariff
Every article that goes into the construc-
ton of rag paper, except bass wood,
sweat and water, has a tariff on it. The
soda, the assafoetida and blue mass, or
whatever is used to deodorize understands
and cast off drawers, so that they will
smell good in a newspaper, has corn on
it in the shape of a 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 removal of
the tariff on type, on rags, on paper, and
on all chemicals used in the manufacture
of paper. In tariff OH rags, Tif there is
no tariff en- rags you had better put one
on, unless you remove the tariff on the
rest of the stuff; if tariff is a good thing
you can't have too much of it for ill.,
stance, whom do you protect Nobody
but guttersnipe rag pickers, and old
maids, who save up rags to buy snuff,
and tin peddlers who trade tin dippers
and skimmers occasionally for -four
sack full Of bad smelling rags. Are the
rag pickers and old maids your principal
constituents
The newspapers of the country believe
that they are entitled to some considera-
ton at your hands. They are in many
instances the instruments through which
many of you have attained the positions
you now hold, and they never have got
much of anything from you except patent
office reports and agricultural documents.
They have set up nights for you, and
done dirty work that may bar them out
OF all participation in the chariot races in !
the golden streets of the New Jerusalem,
and now they demand that you protect
them from the ravages of the type found |
ing and paper making grasshoppers,
before 1t is everlastingly too late.
Not being one of the id literary /
fellers' so touchingly alluded to by the
great Senator Simon Cameron, this epis-
tie to you Corinthians may be little |
raw, and not as polished as ii should be.
but 1t tries to represent the feelings of
the newspaper men of Wisconsin in lam
guage that the wayfairing man, though q
dlabollcal idiot, can understand, and II
means business. The newspapers are
desperate, and while they don't want TO
go ON the war path, they feel that they
have been ravished about enough by the
different tribes OF benefciaries of the
government IF Won great man will p,o.