Washington standard. [volume] (Olympia, Wash. Territory) 1860-1921, 1888-10-19

Gen. Hazard Stevens, OF Boston,
Mass, formerly and for many years a
resident OF Olympia, and lifelong
Republican, is now an earnest advocate
of the reelection OF President Cleve-
land.
We have before us the report OF a
speech which he recently delivered in
Lynn, Massachusetts, the great manu-
featuring town OF that State, in which
the General discusses the tariff ques-
ton in its bearing upon the manufac-
turing and production interests of the
United States. The speech is a very
able one, and especially interesting as
coming from lifelong Republican
whose lot is cast i'll one of the great
manufacturing States of the Union.
He takes the ground that the tariff
tax upon raw materials enhances the
cost of the goods made by American
manufacturers and renders it impossi-
BILE for them to compete in the world S
market for the worlds trade, and de-
prives them Of the great natural mar
kets for their surplus productions; that
if the tariff upon raw materials was
removed and New England could buy
her materials in the cheapest markets
she could successfully meet any COM
petitors at home or abroad and would
rapidly extend her trade into every
region of America, teeming with raw
materials, ready to be exchanged for
manufactured goods. He says, truth
fully, that in this exchanging the pro-
ducts of our skilled labor for their
crude products we avail ourselves Of
their paupei labor; that in many,
perhaps the majority, of industries,
American labor is already the cheapest
because it is the most productive, as
with our superior intelligence, energy
and use of machinery the labor-cost
of many articles is actually less than
in countries where wages are far below
those paid in the United States; that
while the American farmer pays the
highest wages paid by any farmer in
the world, often two, three and four
dollars day to harvest hands, yet by
the use of brains, skilled labor and
machinery, he raises crops cheaper
than they can be raised anywhere
else, and successfully completes in the
markets of Liverpool with the pauper
labor of Egypt and India, where hands
are paid only from six to ten cents per
day; that last year twenty per cent
of our exports, one hundred and thirty
seven million dollars worth, consisted
of manufactured articles of high grade,
the product of skilled labor.
If all of this is true, and the figures
can not be contradicted, it is simply
ridiculous to claim that the general
interests of the country would be pro-
NOTED by tariffs to protect us against
those who cannot compete with us in
free field in the production of man
ufactured articles.
England, for many years, by hel
skilled labor, -lmonopolized the manu-
facture Of our raw cotton into cloths
making more money out OF it than
we did, but the tables ale now turned
We are no longer simply country
producing raw material; on the con
trary, we have taken the front ranl
among the nations of the earth
skilled in turning raw material into
manufactured goods of all kinds, ant
all that we want is cheap raw mate
rial to work up into expensive manu-
featured articles. The enhanced valu'
will go into the pockets of the skilled
laborer and increase the general wealth
of the country.
If the Post-Intelligencer cannot at
ford to employ correspondent in thi