St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1888-04-04
Two Dollars in Minnesota
Wheat to Buy One Dollar
in Ohio Wool.
The Farmer Sells His Wheat
Under the Competition Of
Foreign Pauper Labor,
But Buys Everything He Uses
Under Tribute to the Mo-
nopoliSt of America.

TACT, and without Wasting Time on pretCy
language, dealt shoulder blows at pro-
lection in practical way that brought
the points home to his hearers. After
giving a general idea of the tariff sys-
tenn, he showed how the pocket of the
monopolist got 81 from the increased
prices of American goods, where the
government got 81 from the tariff. The
labor question. in connection with the
tariff, was elaborated to great interest.
The protectionist says that the Ameri-
can laborer is better fed than the
laborer of any other country. This is
true of the laborer III Minnesota, how
ever false it may be regarding the 70
cents day coal miner of Pennsylvania,
or the starving seamstress of the great
cities. But why is the Minnesota
laborer better fed? Is it because of
protection to Minnesota industries? Oh,
no, Minnesota is as
DEVOID OF PROTECTED INDUSTRIES
as the great free trade ocean. Mime
sofa must make her purchases in pro-
tected New England with it's fifty years
the start, and pay the highest prices
and she must sell her product in Liver
hungriest paupers in the universe. The
Minnesota laborer is better fed because
he can buy good bread and good meat
for one-third what the laborer of Europe
must pay. His condition is even better
than that of the Minnesota farmer who
sells his wheat in Liverpool
at prices fixed by the pauper
competition of India and pays half
the price to get it there with protected
rolling stock and protected coal, over
protected steel rails and in British ships,
and then he comes back with the half
that is left and is forced to pay to some
American monopolist manufacturer or
mine owner twice as much for what he
buys as he could have bought it for
where he was forced to sell his wheat.
The wages of the American laboring
man, ON the other hand, are fixed as the
price of everything else is fixed,
viz, where the demand is. A
man may be willing to work for 10
cents a day in India but that
An employer would be laughed at who
tried to hire men here cheaper because
man in India was willing to work
cheap. The laborer would turn ON him
and say: "What do care how cheap
some slave in India will work for. He
can't build your railroads or operate
them after they are built; he can't put
up your buildings, your homes, your
factories; he can't work on your farms
or in your pineries; he can't dig up your
mines Or raise your cotton; he can't run
your mills or make your implements; he
isn't here to do it. It's no difference
whether he is in India or
in England, in Asia or in
Africa, in continental Europe or in Can
ada, he can't compete with me, because
he isn't here to do it. Whether l build
your wagons or carriages. whether l
shoe your horses, repair your machinery,
build your engines, make your boots
and shoes or your clothing, work in
your hotels, offices and stores, work on
your streets or in your foundries, he
must come here if he completes with me.
fair price for doing it, and unless L do
it it will go undone. Everything that L
do for you now, that could be
done elsewhere, you are getting
done for less than you can get it done
for by the pauper labor of any country
and pay the transportation and charges
of getting it there and back. Ninety
per cent of all the labor in what you
consume or use must be done here any
way. You can't send over to Europe to
get your palaces built, even though you
can go over there and feed their pauper
labor and pauper aristocracy with the
very money that you eXtorted from our
laborers in royalties on what you forced
them to buy of you on your promise
to pay it back in steady
employment and higher wages.
We are just learning all this to our sor-
row and now you come among us and
try to get one of US to bid against an
other so you can get days work done
at.about starvation price. but you can't
do that now, we have banded together
to protect ourselves instead of trusting
have agreed on a fair price for our
days labor, and if we can't all get work,
those that do work will get fair wages
instead of having the hungrieSt man bid
the lowest for the job. 1t is note
worthy fact that the farther away you
GET FROM PROTECTION
the higher are laborerS' wages. In Eu-
rope the serf of protected Russia gets
far less than the free laborer of Ger
many, and the laborer of Germany gets
far less than the free trade labOrer of
England. who completes with the pauper
labor of the world In the United States
the half-starved worker in the protected
iron mines of Pennsylvania would think
he had struck paradise if put in the
place of the labOrer in unprotected in
dustries in Minnesota, and the care-worn
workman in the protected fac
tory in New England, whose sole
earthly possessions are a few dollars
saved in lifetime of poverty and hard
work by himself and his whole family
Il
ten years longer could he take the place
of the hale and healthy Western black
smith, who sings at his anvil, goes to a
neat home of his own, gathers around
him his well-kept children, who have
been at school instead of working in a
protected factory, and holds his head,
a as welt citizen ne of mi tEs f free regpube
Protection has driven our commerce
from the sea, and, if it had chance,
would drive our railroads from off the
continent. Its cardinal principle, if it
has any principles at all, is that every
nation, every state, every town and
every family should buy as little as
possible from others, and manufacture
at home everything that was needed,
even though it was done at loss. Not
to trade what we can produce cheap for
what some 0tnor natlOn can produce
cheap; not to trade for what we can
make for 81 for what we couldn't make
for less than 50, but to spend 50 trying
to produce the 81 worth at home.
Protection carried uOut would destroy
trade between every nation, between
every state and between every town
just as it has already destroyed the
nations trade with the rest Of the world
and left us waiting ON our own sea-
board for some foreign ship to come and
Gull out the best of our ample products
to fill the small deficiency after the en-
terpriSe of other nations had sold in the
worlds markets at the best prices the
last cent of their products that they
could spare. May the day speedily
come when America shall earn the
freight Oh what she buys and sells, not
only to and from he own sea-
nd knit RI nd