Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1882-03-16
SENATOR SLAYER ON PROJECTION.

respects "legalzed robbery. ms
coast has all to lose and nothing to gain
from that system. Our farmers are being
taxed at the most extravagant rates IN
order to enlarge the extortionate profits OF
New England manufacturers. The pre-
tense that Protection is needed here to build
up manufactures is utterly false and fall
lacious. We have had Protection for
twenty years, and it has done nothing for
manufactures Nor can it ever help them,
for the plain reason that the competition
which has to be met here is not foreign but
domestic competition, against which no
protection can be had. The Tariff cannot
therefore build up manufactures here, nor
would it be worth while to have them SO
built up. If we cannot have manufactures
without fastening the maintenance of them
upon the whole community, we are better
without them. What Protection does is
to make the farmers pay for the privilege
of having manufacturing neighbors. The
workingmen do not receive any part of the
benefit of the arrangement. however The
most fraudulent of all the many false pre-.
lenses of the Protectionists is the assertion
that their system secures higher wages to
the working classes. As matter of fact
it does nothing of the kind. As matter
of fact the rate of wages in the American
iron and steel trades-to take them for an
examples to-day as low as, if not lower
than, the English standard. The same
state of things exists in the cotton trade,
and whenever "a careful comparison of the
expenses of living in the two countries is
made. it appears that the "pauper labor of
Europe" as these humbugs call it, is
really better paid than that of the United
States.
The high wages claim then collapses the
moment it is examined, and proves to be a
sham. The American workingman derives
no benefit from Protection. On the other
hand he is subjected to many burdens by
means of it. The purchasing power of his
wages, as regards all manufactured articles
outside the food list, is diminished at least
fifty per cent. by that ubiquitous system.
His clothing, his drygoods, his bedding,
his furniture, his tools, his books, his
crockery and glassware, his kitchen stove,
his pots and kettles, the clothing of his
wife and children, everything in short
-
venience of his life. is taxed from 40 to 100
per cent. 1t is only short time ago that
he was compelled to pay like extortionate
tax on the dose of quinine which was to
cure him of the ague, and he still pays it
on many of the drugs he uses. The farm.
ers are in the same boat. They are bled
at every pore by the tariff, while the grain
they raise must seek market under the
most absolute freedom of trade, and they
can never hope to be built up" at the ex-
pense of their fellow countrymen.
The sentiment of the Pacific coast, so
far as it represents intelligent recognition
of the facts, must be against Protection.
The farmers of California must perceive
that they are being plundered right and
left by that system, and that it neither
has offered, does offer, nor can offer them
any compensation. They can settle the
value of the nonsense that the Protection.
lists talk about building up manufactures,
by one glance at the past If Protection
was capable of building up manufactures
on this coast, it would certainly have done
SO before this. But it has not done SO,
and since it never can affect anything of
the kind save by taking the money from
| one class and giving it to another, the
farmers are not interested in the PROPOSE.
tions. What they are interested in is the
obvious fact that whereas they are
obliged to do all their selling on Free
Trade principles, they are forced to do all
their buying on Protection principles
The consequence is that during all these
years they have been handing over very
large percentage of their earnings to the
manufacturers, and have received no con-
sideration. The farmer must sell his
grain at the worlds prices. He
must buy all his supplies at fancy
prices, dictated by the manufacturer
Nor has he the poor satisfaction of know.
ing that what he pays goes to the sup
port of the Government, for it does moth
ing of the kind. 1t is one of the special
beauties of the tariff that while it robs the
people Of, say so per cent, it only turns
in, say Is per cent, to the Treasury.
But what can be said for system which
does not protect Labor; which does not
protect the producer; which does not pro-
mote settlement which solely enriohes a
small minority in the most arbitrary and
inequitable way, by confiscating the earn
ings of the great majority of the nation?
When Protection was first introduced it
was pretended that it was to be merely
temporary measure. It's advocates then
did not venture to demand that it should
be permanently established. 1t was justi-
fed on the pretense of building up our
50 infant manufactures. Manufactures
have been in existence nearly hundred
years. They ought to be built up if they
are ever to be. Yet still we find their
owners hanging about the Hobbies at Wash
ington, whining for more Protection, and
resisting every effort to cut down the tariff.
1t is evident that the system has completely
demoralized its benefciaries. They have
become greedy paupers. They have grown
into the belief that they have right to be
subsisted at the expense of the nation.
They have amassed immense wealth, but
they are never satisfied. They could afford
to pay their employees 100 per cent. higher
wages, but they only think OF keeping them
down as low as possible. 1t is time the
American people threw off this humiliating
bondage; humiliating because so long as it
is endured the conclusion must be drawn
that its victims do not possess intelligence
enough to know when they are being i'm