Tombstone epitaph., 1888-07-21
RESULTS OF FREE TRADE IN GREAT BRITAIN

From Sir Edward Sullivan's letter to the Man
 chester Courier.
 z Cheapness, cheapness, cheapness and cempetition!. These have been the par rot cries of Free.traders; and excellent cries they are for the I,3oo, 900 lucky in dividuals with their fixed incomes; but how about the 3z.8oo.ooo without fixed incomes! How dees it affect them! What does competition and cheapness mean in their casel It means this-it means that when by home competition a starving needle-woman is found to stitch shirts at 4d dozen, straightway a starving foreign woman is found to stitch shirts at 3d per dozen, and her work is brought over here ts drive the English women below starving point! This is competition! This is cheapness' And does it benefit the community?
 The first condition of this much.vaunt. ed cheapness, this panacea of the Cob den Club, is cheap labor; do not let the operatives forget this when they have dinned into their ears the virtues of mere cheapness. Is allow price of corn that is secured by stimulating foreign Produc- tion and discouraging home production a national blessingf Is it national bless ing when the English and Scotch labor CTS are deprived of their employment in favor of the ill-paid labor of Russians, Poles, Wallachians, or Coolies?
 Are shirts stitched by starving women at 4d dozen, a blessing to the commun- ity, or the cheapness of bricks made by over-tasked children at nominal wages, or the cheapness of nails or cables made by overworked women and children blessing? Is the waste of human life, the misery, and the suffering and demorali- ration and immortality inseparable frem cheap labor benefit to the country? Is the cheapness that is caused by cheap foreign labor national blessing1 No, it is not and in spite of all the writings and preachings of the Cobben Club, l maintain that the more we examine the meaning of mere cheapness, the more distinctly we find that it means How standard of life"
 Now, is it desirable to lower the stan dard of nations life? It is a fact, deny it who can, that "cheap places" in all fully settled countries have hitherto been these in which the working poor have been the most degraded and the most depressed. and cheap times those in which they have been the most wretch ed e@.
 Owing to the unrestricted competition many of our manufacturing industries are dead; many are hopelessly sick. Our operatives are losing their work and their wages, Owing to unrestricted conpeti- tion in agricultural produce, the land is going rapidly out of cultivation; the lab orers are losina their work, she stock of meat is rapidly diminishing and the price rising. Is there then no thorn to this vaunted rose of competition! Unrestrict. ed competition is cheapness, such as Freetraders are now forcing upon this country, must end by making the con. dition of labor unbearable. MT. Cham. berfain says that England had been des- crbed as the paradise of the rich, and he warns us not to allow it to become the purgatory of the poor.
 Can any means bs conceived so cer- tain of making i. purgatory of the poor as to encourage wild, unrestricted com petition that deprives our own workpeo. pie of their work, and drives them lower and lower in the scale of lifel Look at it from any point you like, the question resolves itself into Protection or immi- grafton. If foreign competition is restrict. ed, If native industry is protected, wages will rise, work will be steady, the land will again be brought into cultivation, stock will increase and the price of meat will fall. 1.-the present system of unre- stricted competition is encouraged, in. dustries will disappear, more land will go out of cultivation, wages will fall, and the only escape from lower scale of life will be immigration.