The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1885-10-27
MIR. MocULIocHs CONVERSION.

MR.. MooULLOCHS CONVERSION.
The Journal extends hearty congratulations
to the Rev. Oscar c. McCulloch on his CONVEX
sion from the darkness of free trade to the
wisdom and justice of protection. In his
sermon of Sunday evening he took manly
stand against the pernicious fallacy of buying
in the cheapest market, the cornerstone of
the free-trade heresy. This buying where you
can realize the most for your wares, may do
for the man who has wares to sell and the
wherewith to buy, but it must work disaster
and suffering to the men and women who have
nothing to sell but their labor. The doctrine
"buy where you can buy cheapest" is the
curse put upon labor by theorists who main
tain that this question, like all others, will
adjust itself properly if only let alone. So it
will; and the point of adjustment is where
laboring humanity can stand no more without
actual starvation. The process of buying
cheapest, of beating down the price of goods
on one side and cutting the price on the other
in order to catch trade, can result only in
hammering down wages at the mills and
factories The customer who seeks to
buy shirt or pair of
shoes, hat or coat at lower
than the offered rate, drives the merchant
back to do the same at the manufacturers,
and the manufacturer, in turn, must make a
like demand Of his employees. To accommo-
date the free-trade theory of buying cheap
est, the whole train of industry and business
is forced back upon the last car that con-
tains the workers. and from which all trade
and manufacture originate. The Republican
party, in FORMULATING the doctrine of pro-
lection, had in mind this very disposition,
this very contemplate disposition, to buy
where you can buy the cheapest, and that
other equally prominent fact that labor itself
was nearly defenseless in it's unequal fight,
not only against capital but against that in
Vulnerable army seeking to buy cheapest,
and cheaper, until labor is driven to the verge
of starvation. For these reasons the Repub-
lican party has stood up for protection.
American labor has enough to stand up against
the greed and penuriousness of the American
public, saturated with that supremely selfish
idea Of selling dear and buying cheap Ameri-
can labor has enough to hold back pressure
hro11 obi or M box-
Grains doubled against it, by the admission
of foreign competition and the opening of a
broader field in which the people can buy
cheapest.
Mr.. McCulloch has taken manly stand
in behalf of the workingman, and the only
marvel is that he did not earlier open his
batteries on the dangerous dogma of free trade.
AS rule the buyer will take care of himself,
and so will the man who has much to sell or
who buys to sell. But the man or woman
who sells only, and whose sole capita" is
the strength of eye and arm, cannot take care
of himself if these ideas of free trade obtain.
The lot of the American laborer is bad enough
as it is without compelling further concessions
at his hand The tendency has been all the
wrong way. The millions of buyers have
daily haggled over prices, and the seller in
turn has beaten down the wholesale dealer
and the manufacturer. At the end every re-
duction to accommodate the man who wants
to buy cheapest has been wrenched out Of the
hands of the workingman. A law has been
interposed to confne this war against labor to
Americans, and as long as the Republican
party can control legislation some measure of
protection will be afforded American labor
against foreign competition and a British
market, where the men who want to buy
cheaper than free labor can afford would be
accommodated. The Republican idea is that
there is a community of interests here. AS
the laborers prosper, so will all the people,
They cannot prosper and enjoy the blessings
that should fall to the lot of all mankind un-
less fair wages are paid, and this cannot be
done so long as the masses of the people keep
crying, Cheaper" Unless labor is protected
the whole country will suffer from this as
from q curse.
JUDGE BUCHwALTER has continued the in
junction preventing the bully and tool of the
ballot thieves in Cincinnati from issuing the