The Pulaski citizen. [volume] (Pulaski, Tenn.) 1866-current, 1884-11-13
Some Tariff Suggestions.

I
Gle appears over the signature IN"
which we take to represent Mr.
Samuel Noble, one of the south's
foremost industrial developers, and
one deeply interested in a protec-
tive tariff. He writes as follows:
1t is wonderful the amount of So
licitude the free trade organs and
statesmen have for the great army
of workingmen and farmers in want
ing to cheaper the articles they
consume by revision of the tariff,
so as to get cheaper woollen goods,
crockery and articles of prime ne
cessity, etc. Now it is the men
who work whoimake these srticlesIof
necessity, and the working men not
only make but use these things. 1t
is proposed in order to cheaper
these things that the working men
make, by preventing them from
making them at all, by letting the
foreign half paid worker make
them; or if they are made in this
country at all, to compel our men
who work, to work for as mean pay
and live as poorly as they do in
Europe. When 8 foreign blanket,
or piece of crockery, or yard of do
mestic is brought into this country
and sold and goes into use, the la
Dor making it is taken out of the
hands of our own working people;
and the more of this that is done
the less work our people will find
to do, and then it will be but ques-
tion of time, and a very short time
at that, when the European work
men, having done our work for us,
will have to be paid, and in paying
him, he will drain us of all our
money for his cheap goods. Then
our artisan, having nothing to do
the money being all drained from
the country-there will be nothing
to pay with but raw material, so the
only avenue of industry open to the
artisan is to go to farming. In
place then of being consumer of
what the farmer produces he will
be competitor. The foreign man
ufacturer will, in the absence of
competition In buying, get his raw
material at very low price IN or
der to make more cheap goods.
The result is, as it always has
been-under the free trade-that
the farmer will sell what he pro-
duces for any price the foreigner
chooses to give him, and he finds
the only thing the foreigner will
buy from him in raw material that
won't perish in transporting three
or four thousand miles away. The
farmer will find that in place of
having the artisan at home to buy
his chickens, butter, milk, beef,
mutton, fruit, melons, potatoes, tur-
nips, cabbage and everything that
he and children and people Eabout
him can find light and pleasant en-
ployment in raising to help him out,
and thereby making more money
than he can sweating in q cotton
field and wearing himself and his
land out; that this work that he
and his wife aud children could do,
is turned over to the English and
French farmer to do, and in doing
it they will make money and do it
easier off of five acres of land than
our farmers will off of a hundred in
cotton or corn. There is not q free
trade statesman that is now stump
ing over the country and telling the
dear people how anxious he is to
legislate orsstheir benefit who does
not knows this, or ought to know
it. They do know it, but they have
net the courage to come out and
say the policy and traditions of
their party have been an error, and
point out to the people who work
how and why it is an error. They
perfer to still go on the same old
theory of cheap labor and cheap
goods that has brought ruin on the
farmer and artisan alike more than
once, and will every time their free
trades ideas are put in force.
1t is only short time ago, the
same free trade press, the same free
trade statesmen were spreading it
broadcast through the state that
Alabama was being taxed by the
federal system of protection over
eight dollars for ever man, woman
or child, white or black, IN the
state, making over ten millions of
dollars paid out yearly by the peo-
pie of Alabama.
The Hot Blast refuted this state
ment and showed that the people
did not pay a dollar, but on the
contrary that they received more
from the federal treasury by govern
ment expenditures in the state
and by the money the duty brought
in on pig iron exported from the
state, than was paid by the people
of Alabama on all the manufactured
articles they consumed, directly or
indirectly, either imported or made
at home. 1t is time the people of
the south were told the truth. 1t is
time they realize that they have
been robbed,-the farmer and the
laborer alike-long enough of the
fruit of their labor by free trade
theorists. 1t is time the south
should avail herself of the benefits
of protection and grow rich as have
the farmers and artisans of the
north, who have availed themselves
OF the protection the south would
hrn -