The Columbian. [volume] (Bloomsburg, Pa.) 1866-1910, 1888-07-13

A woRKrNGMAN GIVES his VIEWS ON THE
PRESIDENTIAL QUESTION.

The wage workers have been study
ing the tariff question and many OF
them who have hitherto voted the Re
publican ticket have come to the con.
clusion that it is to their best interest
to cast their ballots for Cleveland and
Thurman who are the candidates of
the anti-monopoly party and opposed
to the rnle of moneyed sristocrscy.
One of them said recently:
81 am done with the Republican
party. II was good party once,
when it made war upon slavery, but it
has fallen into the control of men who
deal in human flesh and blood to. day
much as the slave masters did in form
er times. Why, look at theml The
men who controlled the Chicago con-
vention are all of them monopolists
whose palaces are literally built Of the
bones of the working people whose
lives were worked out to enrich these
nabobs. The Vanderbilts, Chauncey
Depew, and the hired attorneys of the
Pacific railroad companies managed
that convention to suit themselves.
The candidate for vice president, Nor
ton, is money shaver whose riches
were wrung from the labor of the
country in interest on the money the
laboriug men earned. He was nomi-
mated because the managers of the
convention expected him to go into
the vote market and buy the suffrages
of the poor like so much meat in the
butcher stall. Do you suppose could
support such ticket
eyes l say the men who now man.
age the republican party deal in the
muscle and brain Of the workingmen
as the slave-master did of old. They
talk against free trade. Well, no
wonder. They are in favor of slaoe
trade. They import the most igno-
rant, degraded and vicious people of
foreign countries and put them to work
in the place of free, Intelligent and
well behaved American workingmen.
They evsde the law in bringing these
men here by shipping them in at ports
where there are no immigration COM
missioners and on the northern from.
tier, thus initiating the pirates that
used to be engaged in the African
slave trade. l put it to you, ought not
a workingman to prefer free trade in
the necessaries of life to slaoe trade in
human flesh and blood
81 have worked as mill hand under
the so-called protective tariff for twen-
ty years and have yet to see the high
wages they blow about so much. Not
one in fifty of my fellow workingmen
owns bis dwelling house and many of
them live in miserable tenements for
which they pay a high rent. They
can lay up nothing, for poor wages,
shut-downs Of mills, and high cost of
living make it impossible. / am ready
to try a different system. II cant
make things worse for us and may
make them better.
81 had my eyes open after the last
election. Our bosses had told us that
if Cleveland would be elected their
mills would shut down indefinitely, for
they would certainly be ruined. !
voted for Blaine, but Cleveland was
elected and the mill has been running
just about as reg ,larly as it did before.
Now they tell us again that if Cleve-
land is reelected the mill is to he
closed. That cock wont fight any
more. As Cleveland has done us no
harm I want to give him a chance to
carry out his policy and see if it will
not do us some good"