Shenandoah herald. [volume] (Woodstock, Va.) 1865-1974, 1888-09-21
WILL THE WORKERS BUY Ex
PERIENCE ?

fEhlENOL
There are two kinds of boys:
One has to learn by experience
how it feels to get drunk, or to have
a street fight, or to spend a night
in the lookup. He think too much
of his own wisdom to learn from
the experience of anybody else.-
The other boy is glad to learn
where and when he can. SO there
are two kinds of nations. One has
to try miseries of free trade before
deciding that it is not good thing.
All the experience of all other ma
tons of the world, and all past ex-
perience of their own nation, Is OF
no value to people of that sort
They get knowledge hy suffering,
and in no other way.
If the workers of this country re-
fuse to learn anything about a
Democratic tariff except by person
al experience, they certainly can
have their own way. They have
votes enough to do as they please.
They can vote for Mr.. Cleveland's
free.trade policy, and see how it
will workout they cannot put
themselves back where they were
before they tried the experiment.
The boy who has once slept IN jail
can never be quite the same boy
again; he has bought his exper-
ience dearly. SO the nation that
once suffers Its industries to be
broken down, and the wages OF its
labor reduced, and its working peo-
pie degraded by unrestrained COM
petition with other countries, gets
valuable information but pays a
high price, and can never expect to
see it's industries attain again the
vigor and confidence and harmony
which they once enjoyed. Degrad-
ing conditions will ecessarily
bring in degraded labor, and III a
very few years even the methods
and the machinery Of labor will so
alter that it can never be brought
back to the old standard af wages,
dignity or independence.
The nation of thirty years ago IS
the father of the nation of to-day,
and the enterprsing, selfassertiye
and fearless young Americans of
to-day are a little apt to despise
the experience of those old fogies,
their fathers. Yet the American
workers of 1910 and 1853 tired
Democratic free.trade, just as far
as the Democrats of those days
dared to 60 with 1t, and their eX-
perience is not to be dlsregarded
by men OF sense. The horizontal
or revenue tariffs Of those days in
volved but tri6ing changes com
pared to those which the House
Tariff bill would involve; they did
not attempt free wool, for example,
nor did they add several hundred
articles to the free list at once, nor
did they cut of at a blow 10 per
cent of the existing duties on the
products Of great industries. Yet
the disasters and the sufferings of
those days were enough to make
the entire nation of wage-earners
turn with passionate anxiety to
Harrison in 1910, and to Lincoln
IN 1860, for relief from the econo.
mic theories of slave.drivers.
If the new generation of Amcrl-
cans insists upon buying its own
experience it can have its own way.
There are a great many thousand
workers who have so long enjoyed
prosperity that they cannot believe
a mere change OF law would make
them paupers. But if half the
manufacturing establishments of
the country, having been called in
to existence by the protective
policy, should be closed by its over
throw if half the manufacturing
workers, 100000 in nu IN b er,
should be turned ont of employ
ment, and forced to trample each
other to death I'm the struggle for
bread, are the enthusiastic boys
quite sure that they would suffer
less than their fathers or grand
fathers