The Indianapolis sentinel. [volume] (Indianapolis, Ind.) 1880-1904, 1885-01-15
THE REAL BENEFIoIARIEs OF PRO.
TECTION.

The period covering the last twenty years
marks the full operation of the high tariff
laws in the United States. This period has
also witnessed the accumulation of greater
number of larger individual fortunes than
any other Of equal length in the history of
the Nation. OF these fortunes the majority
have been rolled up in the New England and
Middle States-the manufacturing section.
Chief among the industries that have yielded
prodigious wealth Is cotton manufacturing,
and we here mention them alone in ilius-
trating point. The mills of Lowell, Fall
River, Manchester, Lawrence Nashua,
Newburyport, Pawtucket, and scores Of
other towns, have enriched their
owners, many of them to sn extent which
policy forbade being made public.
There are mills started with few thousand
spindels, now operating hundreds of thou
sands, the increase of which both ia build
ings aud machinery has been made solely
from ithe earnings, the owners in the mean
time drawing handsome dividends yearly.
The clear profits from some OF them are
kuowp, at times, to have exceeded 80 per
cent. per annum on the capital invested.
The public would hear of, perhaps, 10 per
cent. of this being declared and paid, the
remainder being quietly reserved snd used
for further increasing the capacity of the
gold mines.
In these New England cotton mills are
ABOUT 2OO, 600 operatives, male and female
the latter ouinumbering. The owners of the
mills are Professionalism the interests Of
their operatives, mind you, they favor high
tariff on ell cotton fabrics OF European
, manufacture. We have their oEn word and
that of Mr.. Randall for this, and Mr.. Ran
dali is, as ye all do know, in the words OF
Marc Antony ian honorable man."
And yet-craving pardon of Mr.. Rand
and his Republican, protectiOnist mill
owners-we have an observation to make:
The average d1ty on cotton goods has been
y per cent; the average per cent. of cost OF
manufacturing New England cotton goods
paid to operatives has been less than Ii per
cent. That margin OF more than per cent.
between the duty and the wages of labor has
gone into the purses, not of the operative
| but, of the capitalist. If protection has b zen
| in the interest of labor, how have not the
| cotton manufacturers of New England at
once duped the Government and robbed the
| operatives of more than 80 per cent. of the
wages to which their governmental tariff
| protection entitled them
| Mr.. Randall tells Us that high protection
IS and has been for the benefit of the opera
tives of New England mills. But any man
not subsidized to speak falsely. visiting the
mill towns of New England and going
among the operative classes, will promptly
| and stoutlY denounce Mr.. Randall's state
ment as false. The truth is that the ma
jority of those working people are slaves for
bread, lodging and cheap attire. They are
50 pitiably paid that half of them would
never have the means to take them to the
West or South did better opportunities in
wife them. The mills are owned by corpor-
atoms whose officers are in Boston or New
York. Each mill is under the direction OF
an agent of the corporation whose large
salary is the price of his procuring the
largest possible amount of products at the
very least possible expense. So economically
do many of the operatives have to live that
geveral will sometimes be found huddled in
q single apartment. Parents spend their
lives upon the bare necessities Of life, rails
lug children who, in their turn, go through
the same work for like mesger compensation,
II is not unusual to see a gitl. her mother
and her grandmother, working in the same
mill. YEARLY, monotonously replenishIng
spindles and tending looms these Ameri-
can protected lsborers plod through the years
watching the growth of wealth of the manu-
factursrs whom they toll for and who have
religiously pocketed the per cent. duties
legislated By Congress, prstende lily for these
operatives.
Protection is not and has never been in
the interest OF other than capitalists. The
pretense of its being for the bshoof OF work
people is a sham of kind with that oil
Frochard leading the blind girl on the street
to beg for aims which the old jade steadily
deprived her of, and half starges the sight.
less one while she regales herself from the
aims. Let the Democratic party repudiate
the false pretenders and abrogate their pro-
lection laws.
| |