Memphis daily appeal. [volume] (Memphis, Tenn.) 1847-1886, 1883-03-18
LABOR ASKING FOR PROTECTION.

LABOR ASKING FOR PROTECTION.
Capital has for many years been using Ia
Dor as its cats paw TO get out of the fire the
coveted chesnuts, roasted by the protective
aystem for those who are go fortunate or so
cunning as TO receive tribute money from
their fellow-citizens in addition to the profits
arising from their business. Still these ex-
cellent gentlemen did not want protection
for themselves; it was their honest, toilipg
workmen, whose wages they wished to keep
up to fair figure, that aroused all their
anxiety and diligence to increase The amount
of tribute. But singular to tell, these capt.
talists, while taxing what they have to sell
and the laborer to buy, never taxed what
the lsborer has to sell and they themselves
have 10 buy. Their manufactures had 10
be protected against foreign competition,
while the workingman's labor, for the
benefit OF which they were crowding con-
gresaional Hobbies and committee rooms, has
no protection, nor any provision 10 compen-
safe for the absence OF protection. Foreign
labor has poured free into the country, al
though foreign sugar and clothing are
heavily taxed. The lsborers, after having
long been kept in the dark as to the deviltry
with which they have been duped and vic.
timized, are at length beginning to show that
they are at last catching fair sight Of this
thimbIe-rig operations, by means of which
the profits of protection run all round the
labor thimbles, but are adroitly concealed
under the capitalist thimble. Last fall the
workmen of the United States, at their great
annual convention, took off from its
platform the sanction of protection that had
formerly EXISTED there. This act troubles
the capitalists, for they know that if the
working people once understand the game
that is go steadily played off against
them, that game is over. And now
another blow against protection for capital
only is in preparation. The window-glass
workers association, trades-union whose
qualifications extend all over the Union, is
preparing a bill, to be introduced at the
next Congress, making it criminal offense,
punish able by fine and imprisonment, 10 i'm
port into this country any class Of workmen
under contract TO work at specified rate of
wages for given length OF time. This is
how labor requires to be protected by pro-
tecting the Workingman's labor instead of
the capitalists products. The association
seeking protection says that importations Of
foreign workmen, on the plan they seek TO
have suppressed, began with the introduce
ton of Chinese labor, and has now assumed
alarming proportions requiring decisive
treatment; the trainers Of the pro-
posed law expect to present petitions at the
next Congress in its favor amounting to
100000 names. When this subject comes
no for debate we shall see how far objection
to "the psuper labor Of Europe" will carry
the protectionisls. When the laborers strike
they want to be protected against the COM
petition of this "pauper labor" imported for
the express purpose of competing ruinously
sgainst American labor. That capital should
secu-e protection to keep wages up, and at
the same time import psuper labor 10 keep
them down, is way of business the work
ing people propose to put an end TO. The
great fraud is becoming exposed, and once
the peoples eyes are opened down the pro-
tectionist idol will come.