The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1884-03-12
LETTERS FROM THE PEOPLE.
workingmen and Their Detractors.

NOrklngmen and Their Detractors.
To the Editor of the indianapolis Jou rnal:
The testimony in favor of a protective tariff
given before the ways and means committee of
the House by the iron-workers of Youngstown
o.. has operated like an emetic upon the bilious
arrangement of the free trade editor of the
News. In his issue Of the 10th inst he goes for
these workingmen. Being unable to answer
testimony that admitted of no controversy" or
to accomplish the impossible by refuting actual
experience, he resorts to the towards argument
"a sneer. These worlingmen are pictured as
lot of lawful examples, whose eyes stick out
with fairness, and who went to Washington
with their railroad fare and expenses paid by
their boses' They are put in the same category
with Mr.. Squeers's scholars of Dotheboy's
Hail. "a, as if they We're but puppets
especially prepared for public exhibition as the
fatlings of protection. All this may seem like
argument to the editor of the News; to hon
orabie men of all phases of political belief it viii
appear as vile caricature, rejecting dscredit
only upon the bigoted and unmannerly soul that
dictated it.
The writer is somewhat acquainted with one
member of the Youngstown delegation He is
man who throughly understands what he IS
about and can speak of the evil effects of free
tIdu0 upon tne WtIIar6 OF MS class lrOm al OA
perience which no logic or theory can combat.
In knowledge, acquired and experimental, of
the tariff question in all its many -sided bear
ings. as well as of independence of thought,
honesty of conviction and sturdy manhood he
is the peer, any day, of the editor of
the News. If his colleagues OF the
delegation are his equals in these high qualities
as they evidently are they need fear compari-
son, in intelligence or morals, with the staff OF
the News
Now, Mr.. Editor, is it not about time that the
opinions of mechanics, miners and workingmen
touching the great industries of the country,
with which they are connected and which sup
port Them should be treated with deceney if not
with respect by the free trade press of the cOun
trys These men, as you say, may not be ac-
quanted with the logic of Mill and the various
expounders of the doctrines of free trade they
may never have heard of Professors Sumner and
Perry, and that class of millenial theorists, and
it would doubtless be useless to come at them
with figures drawn from statistics col
lated to support theories that
have no basis in actual facts.
But they have been there; they have learned
their lessons in the bitter school of experience,
and have thereby acquired a knowledge which
the man who wasn't there" knows nothing
about Many of them have tasted the dregs of
poverty in free trade England, living in misera-
BILE overcrowded huts, surrounded by dirt and
squalor, with no homes of their own nor pros
pect of any; fed on the coarsest kind of food,
and scant at that, and engaged in one eontinu-
Gus battle of how to keep themselves and theirs
from the ''worll,Us." After sacrifices untold,
they finally escaped this thralldom and brought
their families here, where they eat meat
much oftener now, and know what it
is to have an egg for tea, because
they are much better able to afford what their
comrades in Great Britain still regard as a lux
ury.' Multitudes of them, too, have homes of
their own, which they did not have courage
even to aspire to in the old land. Had they
superior advantages, cheaper living and better
wages on the other side, they would have been
there still. They are here because it is infinitely
to their advantage to be here and if they pro
test against the folly of countenancing free
trade" it is because they would not have the
same humihating and impoverishing condition
of things here from which they have so provi-
dentially escaped. have ''been there"
ADOPTED CITIZEN.
InDIANAPoLIs March IL.