The intelligencer. [volume] (Lexington, Mo.) 1887-1891, 1888-10-13
FALSE PREMISES.



From the st. Joseph Gazette
In the exuberance of a fancy untam-
ed by any scruples against falsehood,
protectionist orators and newspapers
are not a little prone to deal in assump-
lions that are entirely groundless and
sbsurd. They assume the existence of
certain conditions, attribute the exis-
tence of these conditions to the tariff
II they be desirable and beneficial, to
free trade if they be Objectionable and
Injurious. The lameness of many
arguments made by them is found in
the fact that their premises are wrong,
hence their conclusions must be wrong.
Fol- instance, nothing is more common
than to hear factory operatives describ-
ed as "horny-handed sons of toll"
The majority Of factory operatives are
not men, but women and children.
1t is also assumed that all factory
operatives receive liberal compensation
for their labor. The fact Ia that many
Of them work for starvation wages.
The factory operatives are represent.
ed as a favored class of wage workers,
when, in fact, their condition is in no
respect better, II in some respects 1t is
rot less comfortable, than that of wage
Workers engaged in other vocations.
1t is assumed that in the manutactur-
ing districts labor finds ready and
steady employment, when, In fact,
sich q condition is the exception, and
not the rule. Lockouts, strikes and
disturbances of various kinds, some.
times resulting from u cause,
sometimes from another, render the
I1eans of subsistence of operatives in
ilany branches exceedingly precarious.
1t Is taken for granted that large
rofits TO the protected manufacturer
isureS lucrative wages to the employee,
when everybody knows that, no matter
low large the dividends paid to stock
J olders, the wages OF the emplove are
etermined by competition in the labor
I iarket, and that the manufacturer buys
le cheapest labor that is offered.
But, most preposterous OF all, is the
sumption frequently INDUCED in,that
Ile wage workers employed in pro-
tscted Industries are the owners of
homes. 1t 10 not uncommon for repub-
lican speakers TO dwell tor q full halt
hour upon this theme, drawing beauti-
tul pictures OF cottages filled with
happy mortals who are indebted to
Protection for comfortable homes.
This is unmixed rot. The great cities
do most of our manufacturing. Do the
factory operatives in these cities own
the houses they live in? Do the coal
miners of the Hooking Valley, who
work for q dollar a day and sleep i'll
wooden hunks arranged like the
shelves in q closet, so that score of
them are packed in a single tenement,
own their own homes? 81 .
Newspapers and orators frequently
refer to villages that have been founded
by the owners of great industries, such,
for instance, as Pullman, 9 Chicago.
But do Pullman's employees own this
village? Are any of the cottages built
for the occupancy of the factory opera
tive owned by them?
The ingenuity with which isolated
cases in which benevolent employers
have built houses and g~raciously rented
them to their employees furnishes anoth-
err illustration of the proneness OF tue
protectionist to deal in unfounded and
absurd assumptions. On ones fingers
can be counted the manufacturers y no
have interested themselves in providing
comfortable tenements for workingmen.
For every factory operative thus pro-
vided with a landlord and employer in
combination, q thousand dwell in
crowded tenement houses, unfit tor
habitstions for human beings. 1t is
the exception and not the rule for the
factory operatives of the great cities 10
escape q lite in crowded tenement
houses, just as it is the exception for
manufacturing districts to provide
wage workers with steady employ
ment.
Unfortunately, an Arcadia, such as
exists in the Imagination OF republican
orators, finds no place in the pages OF
history. Commerce is cruel and avari-
cious. The fortunes it piles up are in
a sense so many monuments to the per-
sistence Of avarice. Its processes are
the inventions not OF the heart, but OF
the head. The objects it aims at are to
bs attained in only one way-by buy
ing labor as cheaply as possible and
sailing its products at as great an
advance as can be obtained.