Democratic Northwest. [volume] (Napoleon, Ohio) 1869-1894, 1884-09-11
Where Labor is Under the Iron Heel.

Where Labor Is Under the Iron Heel.
Chicago Herald.l
It will surprise many people 10 know
that in this year of plenty there are
thousands of people in PENNSYLVANIA
and Ohio suffering for the necessaries of
life.
The dispatches making note ofthe ar
rest of forty or fifty coal miners near
California, Pa, state that when the men
were being loaded in wagons To be con-
veyed to Jail the wives of fifteen or
twenty of them with babes in their
arms begged the officers to take them
to prison also, for they had nothing to
eat.
1t will surprise many other people to
know that in this free country, when
thousands of men quit work because
wages have been reduced below the liv-
ing point and their employers then inn
port pauper labor, the old workingmen
have no right to assemble and discuss
their wrongs in public.
The dispatches from the Pennsyl-
vania and Ohio mining regions daily
contain illusions to the wholesale ar
rest of men whose only fault appears to
be that they are poor and are seeking
in the only way known to them to bet
ter their condition.
1t will surprise some other people to
know that many of these mining dis
tricts resemble military camps in which
imported laborers without families are
marched around under warlike guards
while the displaced workingmen, with
helpless women and children, gaunt.
faced and hollow-eyed, clinging to them
stand by sullenly.
mining towns of Ohio daily contain
some such sentence as this: "A mill
tary guard knocked one aged striker
down and broke his right arm"
1t will touch some hearts in this
great West where the barns are burst
ing and the golden sheaves are piled
high in every field to know that the free
distribution of coffee and dry bread tt
a camp of four or five hundred idle
miners in Pool No. 4, Pennsylvania
called out delirious expressions of JOY
from the half famished men.
A telegram from Pittsburg says thai
when this poor feast was in progres.
one old man, bent almost double will
age and toll, laid his miserable morse
on the ground while he sang witt
streaming eyes and a trembling voice
"Hard Times Come Again No More"
These are protected industries. Thest
men are the ones whom our politician!
tell us they enoble by tariff Legislation
These hunger-stricken and pale-faceC
women and children begging for i'm
prisonment if so be it bring bread, art
the families of the protected working
men of whom we hear so much. Thesl
thousands of idle men standing arount
watching imported laborers who worl
under the protection of rifles are the
workingmen whom the tariff is Levied
to enrich. These sleek employers who
fill the places of strikers so easily witt
wholesale importations are the meI
who contribute to maintain campaign
organs, which preach lies and circulate
falsehoods and which claim to be labor
ing only for the workingman's good.
Out here in the West these thousand:
of prosperous and comfortable farmer!
whom one sees on every hand are no
protected. No one passes laws to dig
nifty and ennoble them. These carpenters
and masons and and railroad laborers
are not protected, but they have enough
to eat and to wear Hunger, want, anC
idleness come to none of these. They
are in enjoyment of the comforts of life
in spite of "protection" which taxes
them 40 per cent. on most of the thing:
which they are compelled to buy.
A tariff reformer need not be afraid
to invite q comparison between the pro-
tectionist East and the free trade West
The record is open.