Iron County register. [volume] (Ironton, Iron County, Mo.) 1867-1965, 1888-09-27

Applause. Mr.. Blaine is the great GEN.
trail figure in this campaign. and he tells
the people, in the face of the platform of
his party, in the face of the declarations of
his political friends on the stump and
neighbors, that these trusts are pri-
vate affairs in which neither the
President nor anybody else has any par
ticular right to interfere. Applause and
laughter.l Why, my friends, larceny is q
private affair-a very private affair
[laughterl; q nd yet it is not supposed i'm
proper to interfere with 1t by law. The
highwayman who meets you on the public
road and demands your money or your
life is engaged in the transact on Of a pri-
vate enterprise, but still the law takes
cognizance of his act and Furnishes it as
crime. TApplause.l Now, gentlemen, Mr..
Blaine has not been occupying very good
position from which to view the interests
Of the American working men, farmer or
consumer The top Of Mr.. Carnegie's
coach, as it bowled along with its Inverted
outriders over the hills Of Scotland, is not
good place from which to look at the
interests Of America [Applausel Nor
are the festal halls of Cluny Castle very
good point, either. fApplause.l
Mr.. Blaine had better stay at home or
stay abroad-one or the other. GCheers.
Had he come here to his own country
and mingled with the farmers, with the
consumers, with the laboring-men Of the
land, he would have far better opportu-
nifty to know what they desired than he
could possibly have dining and winning
with the aristocracy of Europe.
1t is said, gentlemen, that even if it does
impose enormous burdens on the con-
sumers of the country the wages of our
! laborers must be maintained, therefore
high rates of taxation must be continued.
If had the time / think could show to
| the satisfaction of every intelligent and
candid man within the sound of my voice
| that the wages of labor are no more
affected by the rates of duties upon i'm
| ported goods than the yield of corn to the
acre on your farm is affected by it. Zap
plause.l And one of the chief bene-
| fits of the system, in the estima-
| ton of Mr.. Harrison. is the fact
that the people do not know. how
much they are paying. When a mans
| money is taken away from him without
| his knowledge, some malicious people call
| it stealing. [Applause.l 1 will not, how
| ever, apply that term to the processes by
| which the Government of the United
States abstracts this enormous sum of
money from the pockets of the people who
| earn it and puts it in the public Treasury
| or the pockets of some one else; but will
| say that it is the most dangerous form of
| taxation that could be devised [cheersl, be-
| cause it makes the people less vigilant of
| the expenditures of the public money and
| lulls them to sleep while their substance
| is taken away. Applause Under an indi-
! rect tax law you would not submit to it a
| single day, and the man who went to Con-
gress from any single Congressional dis
| trict of the United States, Democrat or
| Republican, who failed to cast his vote in
favor of the reformation of such a system
of taxation would never see the halls of
the House again. TCheers.l
l have said, gentlemen, that the system
of taxation Is continued on the ground
that it increases the rates of wages of the
American laborer. There are two or three
facts which show conclusively that this
argument is not sound. In the first place,
it is conceded fact that there is as much
| difference between the rates of wages
paid in this country to laborers engaged in
the same occupation in different parts of
| the country as there is between the differ
ence Of the average rate of wages paid
here and in European countries, and yet
| the same tariff law prevails throughout
the whole United States. [Applause.
You will hnd py an examination OF the
| labor statistics that from fifty to sixty,
and in some cases even as high as one hun
dred per cent more is paid for labor in
| the same occupation in Chicago than is
-
| tariff regulated wages l submit that the
rate of wages would be the same, would
be uniform in the same occupations
throughout the United States under the
same tariff [Applause.l Another fact is
that the greatest difference between the
rates of wages paid here and the rates
paid in European countries is found
in those occupations which nobody
pretends can be protected under the
<oy-;H loxr-o bar iS q
far greater difference between the rates Of
wages paid here to carpenters, plasterers,
painters, stone and brick-masons, team
sters, railroad employees, steamboat en-
ployes and the rates of wages paid to the
same classes of working-men in Europe than
there is between the rates of wages here
in your mills and cotton factories and the
| rates Of wages paid in the same indus
tries in Europe. The rates of wages
paid in this country, too. on the unpro-
| tected industries are larger on the average
than the rates of wages paid in this coun-
! try in the protected industries, and the
difference between them in the one case,
| and those paid in Europe in the other case,
! is still plainer-much palmer. Another
| fact is that since 1916 when the English
corn laws were repealed, and what our
Republican friends call free trade, and En-
| gland entered on free trade, the rates OF
l
| seventy five and even as high as one hun
dred per cent. in some occupations. Can
| we trace that increase in this country dur
/ ing the same time! Another fact is that
| the rates of wages in the mechanical and
| manufacturing industries of the United
| States increased far more during what is
| called the free-trade period. from 1880 to
1860, than they have ever since that time.
| fCheersl
I simply state these facts without going
i into argument to prove them. ] can pro
duce abundant and overwhelming testi
/ mony from laboring-m men, from manufact
/ urers, from testimony given before inves
tigating committees in the House to prove
the truth of every statement Ihave made
upon this subject. (Applause.l But they
say if you reduce these duties this country
will be overwhelmed with foreign cheaI
goods, and all our manufacturing and me
chanical industries will be ruined. Why
gentlemen, if all the ships in the world
were employed continuously in bringing
goods from Liverpool to New York, il
would take them two years to bring as much
as single railroad in this country carrie:
| in one year. If all the Cunard vessel:
| plying between Boston and New Yorl
and European ports were to be employed
1t would require them seventy-five year.
} to bring to this country as much goods a!
the Pennsylvania railway carries in one
year. Applause And yet these gentle
men expect a sensible man to believe tina
a reduction of the taxation on the people
| will close up all our manufacturing estab
lishments and compel people to rely alone
upon foreign products for the necessarie
| of life. The proposition is too absurd ant
preposterous to be argued. From 1850 t
L a \, A,I TO Tl1 7