Nevada County picayune., 1888-05-16
Communism and Protection.


 inauguration of the present protec- tive tariff policy. Is their prevalence now a coincidence merely? Or is their any necessary relation between Communism and tariffs for protec- ton.
 Georgeism. and all that family of dogmas. have among their adherents one common essential principle-that it is the right and the duty of gov crnment to seize. by law. the fruits of the labor of one man and divide them with others.
 Tariffs for protection have for their essential and fundamental principle the right and the duty of government to seize, by law, the earnings of one man and give them to another.
 The advocates of protection and the socialist both not only claim this common fundamental right. but both base their claim upon as patriotic re- gard for the general welfare. the diff ference being mainly in the character and influence of the men who advo- cate the one or the other.
 In speech delivered by Mir. Blaine in August. 1886, at Lake Se- bago, he boasted of the enormous growth in wealth of those States which had ayailcd themselves to the great est extent of the protective tariff within the past twenty-five years. And he sustained the boast with an array of figures that were startling.
 It is to be regretted that this dis tinguished gentlemen did not dwell with equal emphasis upon the want of even normal growth in what l may be permitted to distinguish as the consuming States. at whose expense this abnormal growth had been effec- i ted. As Mir. Blaine is not ignorant of the economic fact that not the 1 increase so much as the distribution of the wealth of nation is the true measure of it's prosperity, his boast full spirit might have been somewhat damned if he had sought far enough to find that while there had been q congestion of wealth in the manufac- turing States, there had been a cor responding depletion in the consum- lng States. The earnings of the lat ter had been seized. by law, and handed over to the former.
 One of the pyramids of Egypt a useless tomb of despotic monarch, cost the labor of 3G0, ,O00 men for twenty years. At the same rate of wages that an American laborcr re- ceives. this would have cost about three thousand millions of dollar, or about twenty times as much as the assessed valuation of the whole state of Arkansas. The royal residence of Peru cost the labor of 10000 men for fifty years, while that of Mexico cost the labor of 200 ,OO0 men.
 It was once the point to these immense expenditures as evi- dence of the great wealth of these nations. Yet it may we'll be doubt ed whether any of them. in it's palm fest days. was equal in wealth to the single State of New York. But the enormous wealth of the king and no- bility was at the expense of all the rest of the community. The labor CTS who built the pyramid received as their share of their own earnings, we are told, less than two cents per day.
 In the one case the government seized, by law, the just earnings of the masses and appropriate them to the king and nobles. In the other case, the government seized, by law the just earning of the consumers of our country and appropriate them to the manufacturer and his factory hands.
 The Protectionist press and stump orators are accustomed to appeal to the sellishness of the factory hand and the employer, urging the one to use his ballotand the other his purse to perpetuate the protective policy, lest the wages of one and the profits of the other be diminished. The journals and the man who make these appeals represent large wealth and intelligence and influence. What wonder that the less educated Com munist should reason that if it is right to use the ballot for taking by law, the property of the consumer and giving it over to the manufactu-