Centre Democrat. [volume] (Bellefonte, Pa.) 1848-1989, 1880-03-11
A MODEL MEMORIAL.
PLAIN TALK TO CONGRESS OF DESPERATE
NEWSPAPER MAN.


sent to Congress comes from the Wis
consin editors and publishers associa-
tion asking for the remission of all
tariff duties on chemicals and such
other dutiable articles as enter into
the manufacture of paper. In trans
mitting the resolution passed by the
aforesaid publishers association the
president, Mr.. George Peck, adds in
the memorial: "Now that you have
read the resolutions it is a supposable
case that you will feel that your next
duty is to throw them into the waste
basket. In the name of 100000
people, be the same more or less, ask
you not to lose your cue, but ruminate,
as it were, and think over the high
way robbery that is being practiced
upon your unsophisticated constituents
by the type founders, who are found
erlng the newspapers. AS it is now
they stand in the entrance of the edi-
torial 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 grap-
pie the throat of every newspaper in
America, and say Keno" while the
newspaper publisher can only return
his chips to the dealer and say 40,
hell y Every article that is used by
a newspaper man, except second hand
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 beauti-
full shore, is the recent action of the
manufacturers of paper, who are en-
deavoring to screw down the lid of the
newspaper coffin which the type found
ers 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 con-
struction of rag paper, except bass
wood, sweat and water, has tariff on
it. The soda, the asafGtida and blue
mass, or whatever is used to deodorize
undershirts and cast off drawers, so
that they will smell good in a news
paper, has a corn on it in the shape of
a tariff, so that the paper manufactur-
ing three-cardmonte chaps have an
excuse to bleed newspapers to the last
drop. What the newspapers want,
and they believe it is not an unreason-
able demand, is the removal of the
tariff on type, on rags, on paper, and
on all chemicals used in the manufac-
ture of paper. In tariff on rags (if
there is no tariff on rags you better
put one on, unless you remove the
tariff on the rest of the stuff: if
tariff is good thing you can't have
too much of it, for instance, 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 a -four sack full of
bad smelling rags. Are the rag pick
ers and old maids your principal con-
stituents?
The newspapers of the county 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 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 .Jeru-
salem, and now they demand that you
protect them from the ravages of the
type founding and paper making grass
hoppers, before it is everlastingly too
late,
Not being one of the id literary
fellers" so touchingly alluded to by
the great Senator Simon Cameron, this
epistle to you Corinthians may be
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
understand, and it means business.
The newspapers are desperate, and
while they don't want to 90 ON the
war path, they feel that they have
been ravished about enough by the
different tribes of benefciaries Of the
government. If you great men will
pass bill to give us relief, you will
strike it rich, and don't you forget it.