The Ottawa free trader. [volume] (Ottawa, Ill.) 1843-1916, 1888-11-03
REPUBLICAN LOVE FOB LABOR.

REPUBLICAN LOVE FOB LABOR.
The republican party of today-of thil
campaign-poses as the friend Of labor. l,
attacks the Presidents appeal for reduc
tion of taxation as an attack upon labor
the Mills bill is called free trade docu
ment, attacking labor. These fellows
who "fry out the fat" from manufacturers
to perpetuate system which gives them q
Al per cent tariff to protect their goods
while they give only III per cent of the
value OF their product to their laborers
pocketing the excess of 1913 per cent them.
selves,-base all their objections to tax re-
duction upon the cry, 1T is an attack upon
ldbor"
Yet the fact remains that while every
thing In the way of manufactured articles
is heavily protected from foreign competi.
ton by a heavy tariff. labor is FREE and
always has been. While from the very
day 1t first assumed the legislative and ex-
ecutive powers of the government, the re.
publican party has always and at all times
had under It's protective care the personal
interests of the manufacturers, increasing
from time to time the tariff taxes to pro-
tect them, 1t has never, at any time, made
one sign that II cared one straw for the
lsboriDg man except at election times.
Labor unions have been frowned upon by
that party, and every right such unions
have acquired from them have been forced
from reluctant republican legislative
bodies; and today the States In which
labor unions have the fewest rights and
privileges and least protection are without
exception republican.
Republican Legislation has always held
in view the making of the products of
labor dear and labor itself cheap 1t levies
tariff on everything a laboring man uses
his clothes, his tools, his household uten
sils, his fuel the lumber In the house that
covers him and his little ones, but 1t opens
wide the doors that admit at Castle Garden
the man who comes here to take his place
in the mills and the mines when he strikes
for higher wages or lower hours-admit.
ting labor FREE, and forcing labor to COM
pete with all the world, while labor's boss es
are protected from all the world! Oliver p
Morton himself imported laborers to work
his fancy farm on the Hudson river VIXEN
his American workmen asked for better
wages, who were replaced with Hungarians
and Italians at half American wages, and
those men work his farm to this day. Har
rison himself voted repeatedly to permit
the entrance of the Cinnamon who have
been such curse to the white labor of the
Pacific coast, and every amendment offered
to that law to restrict and make such immi-
grafton difficult he voted against.
All men have heard of the immigration
of laborers under contract and of paupers,
through the action of which outrage Amer
lean labor has been driven out of the mines
vi ouu tuC last, OuJ OF tOe
coke districts of the Monopgehela river
and out of many of the iron mills of the
same State, and out Of other occupations of
common labor east and west; but the
young men, the laborers of today, do not
know, and many older men have forgotten,
the origin Of that contract labor and Its at
tendant results; and therefore are ignorant
of the bottom facts of the great love O. of
the republicans for the laboring man. One
might refresh their memories.
The civil war period of our history is the
great source of republican eloouence.
What republicans did then, Is the great
burthen of their speeches even of today
but there Is one act to which they do not
refer as part of their record Of those dark
days. Strange! 1t 50 typifes the over
whelming love of the workingman that
one wonders they have not called II up In
these latter days when they are willing to-
sacrifice everything else to benefit the
workingman--of other countries. This was
the act entitled IAN Act to Encourage Inn