Grant County herald. [volume] (Lancaster, Wis.) 1850-1968, 1884-02-21
Free Trade In Great Britain.

the Manchester Eng Courier, written
to SIR Edward Sullivan, Member of Par
lament, will repay careful reading:
Cheapness, cheapness. cheapness and
competition These have been the par
rot cries of free traders; and excellent
cries they are for the 800, 900 lucky in
dividuals with the fixed incomes; but
how about the 32, 800, 900 without fixed
incomes! How does it affect them?
What does competition and cheapness
mean in their casep 1t means this-it
means that when by home competition
starving needle-woman is found to
stitch shirts at four pence a dozen,
straightway starving foreign woman is
found to stitch shirts at three pence a
dozen, and her work is brought over
here to drive the English woman below
starvation point! This is competition.
This is cheapness! Aud does it benefit
the community?
The first condition of this much
Wanted cheapness, this panacea of the
Golden club, is cheap labor; do not let
the operatives forget this when they
have dinned into their ears the virtue of
mere cheapness. is low price of
corn that is secured by stimulating for
eign production and discouraging home
production national blessing? Is it a
national blessing when the English and
Scotch laborers are deprived of their
employment in favor of the ill-paid la
Dor of Russians, Poles, Wallachians or
coolies? Are shirts stitched by starving
women at pence a dozen blessing to
the community, or the cheapness of
bricks made by overtasked children at
nominal wages, or the cheapness of
nails made by overworked women and
children blessing? Is the waste of HUI
man life, the misery and suffering and
generalization and immortality insepa-
rable from cheap labor benefit to the
country Is the cheapness that is
caused by cheap foreign labor national
blessing? No, it is not, and. in spite of
all the writings and preachings of the
Golden Club, maintain that the more
we examine the meaning of mere cheap
ness, the more distinctly we find that it
means a Glow standard of life.'' Now.
is it desirable to lower the standard of a
nations life? 1t is fact, deny it if YOU
can, that ''cheap places in all fully set
tied countries have hitherto been those
in which the working poor have been
the most degraded and depressed, and
cheap times those in which they have
been the most wretched
In the West Indies, for instance, food
for week can be grown with two hours
labor. Are the negroes of the West In
dies prosperous They are idle and
miserable beyond belief. Amongst the
Moujiks of the Don wheat used to be so
cheap that it was burned for fuel.
Their misery and squalor was without a
parallel in Europe. But it is not neces-
ssry to go to the West Indies or the Don
to illustrate this argument. Take
America and Ireland. America is es-
sentially dear country, where high
rate--a very high rate of living pre-
walls; high wages, high expenditure.
Ireland is cheap country, where the
wages are low-vcry low, and the rate
of living as low as possible.
Now, it is an unpleasant statement,
but it is true, that the lower price of
wheat is not owing to free trade, but to
steam; but the higher price of meat, veg
etables, dairy products, etc., ETC., is the
result of free trade, because free trade
has thrown the land out of cultivation,
reduced our stock, made it hopeless for
our farmers to cultivate at profit.
Granted that wheatis 10 shillings quar-
ter cheaper than it was thirty years ago
and meat 80 per cent. dearer, and this
is approximately true in both cases,
what is the exact gain or loss to each in
dividual? Each adult consumes on an
average, six bushels of wheat in the
year; so that he saves by the fall in price
of wheat shillings pence per annum.
On assumption that a workman in good
employ eats three pounds of meat every
week, this would be an increase of 8
pence per week, or 80 shillings per an
mum, so that he would gain shillings
pence and lose 80 shillings, net loss
of 81 shillings pence independently of
the greatly increased cost of milk, but
ter, vegetables, etc., etc.
Owing to the unrestricted COMPETE
ton, many of our manufacturing indus
tries are dead; many are hopelessly sick.
Our operatives are losing their work and
their wages. Owing to the unrestricted
competition in agricultural produce, the
land is going rapidly out of cultivation;
the laborers are losing their work, the
stock of meat is rapidly diminishing and
the price rising. Is there, then, no thorn
to this Wanted rose of competition?
Unrestricted competition in cheapness,
such as free-traders are now forcing in
this country, must end by making the
condition of labor unbearable. Mr..
Chamberlain says that England has been
described as the paradise of the rich,
and he warns us not to allow it to be-
come the purgatory of the poor.
Can any means be conceived so GER
tain of making it purgatory of the
poor as to encourage wild, unrestricted
competition thatdeprives our own work
people of their work, and drives them
lower and lower in the scale of life?
Look at it from any point of view you
like, the question resolves itself into pro-
lection or emigration. 1T foreign COM
petition is restricted, if native industry
is protected, their wages will rise, their
work will be steady, the land will again
be brought into cultivation, stock will
increase, and the price of meat will fall.
If the present system of unrestricted
competition is encouraged, their indus
tries will disappear, more land will go
out of cultivation, wages will fall, and
the only escape from lower scale of
life will be emigration.