The Rock Island Argus. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1877-1885, 1881-11-10

The Bessemer steel monopoly, monop
oily both through the force of patents and
high protective tariff has been receiving
the attention of Mr. David Wells, in arti.
Giles published in the Iowa State Leader.
That paper summarized his last letters in
this manner:
| To-day we present. sthe last of Mr..
| Wells stories illustrating the iniquity of
our existing tariff. 1t is the blacklist page
| in the history of American fiscal legisla
ton. No more absolute monopoly ever
existed in any country and no ten monop-
oles that ever existed reaped such har-
vest of spoils In 1880 it garnered in
S26 600, 600 of booty. In 1881, estimating
the out-pan, according to the Iron and
Steel Association itself, at / $50, 600 tons,
the booty amounted to $50 100000 In
the current fiscal year, 1882, the prospect
i've product being 1,500, 900 tons, the plum
der VII amount to S42, 100000. Here are
SOB, 900, 600 in three years, taken in by
eleven firms over and above the price of
rails Just across the Canada line. That is
twenty-five per cent of the assessed value
of Iowa-equal to the taxable value
of twenty-five average counties in
Iowa And when the three
years are up, during which this soulless
monopoly bleeds the people of $103, 000,.
900. the sickening crime against manhood
and decency will not stop there, but the
plunderers win hope to reap richer har-
vest next year, and yet a still richer one
the next, and so on eternally if they could.
And be it remembered that John V. Kas-
son issthe special defender of this monopoly
and goes about praising its good work at
county fairs. Governor Gear, though a
Protecitonist, had the good sense to de-
nounce it in his last inaugural address
How long viii it be before this giant
monopoly will get more revenue than the
United States Governments Already it
gets, out ef protection alone, twice
New York. Pennsylvania, and Cnio
in 1870, and two-thirds as much as the
total state taxes of all the states in the
Union for that year. And yet the Presi-
dent of one of the heaviest of those eleven
firms wrote to enquire of one of the editors
of this paper, in way that was childlike
and bland. IF the American people are
deeced out of $1,000, 100000 year, who
is it that gets this money from the Ameri-
Can people?" Such is the effect of tariff
spoliation on the moral sense of its bene-
fciaries.
It is pity that our Greenback friends
have talked monopoly, and "plunder,
and robbery" until those words have
well nigh lost their force. Let no one sup
pose that this is another wild, reckless agi-
tation of the same sort. Remember the
terms in which Prof. Perry, the standard
author of Political Economy in Iowa col
leges, characterized this lnfamy. Remem
Der that the more the. severe
terms in which we denounce
the open robbery of Protection
the better we please the college professors,
Remember, too that the highest authori-
ties in Political Economy give us the high |
est praise. In using the language of
Greenbackism, misapplied in that ease, in |
our agitation, we have the warm approval |
and encouragement of the very leaders of |
American thought, expressed in letters re-
ceived almost daily. These come alike /
from republican and democratic sources. |
Let our friends who imagine that we are |
engaged in another ephemeral antl-monop- |
oily or Greenbaek agitation remember these |
khings and take due warning.
And it is this monopoly, which no |
language is considered by the pro-
foundest and most polished of American I
writers too harsh TO describe, which +
is the instigator of the pauper,s Conyen-