Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1888-08-30
A SHORT SUMMARY OF FACTS.
Who Are tho Supporters of Free Trade
and What Is Their Relation to
American Labor.

whether short summary of indubitable
facts might not be devised which would
enable the intelligent and patriotic voter
satisfactorily to determine for himself
whether the interests of the country are
likely to be subserved by the predemin-
ance OF party favoring the Mills bill
and committed to other legislation of
like character Who are the advocates
and supporters of this legislation, and
what is their relation to American labor
and National prosperity?
The answer. is easy and significant:
I. Every foreign manufacturer and
dealer in articles competing with Ameri-
can products.
2. Every foreign statesman who
faces in his own land the problem of Tn
employed pauper labor.
g. Every government which is jealous
of our unprecedented prosperity.
4. Every enemy of republican govern
ment in the world.
5. Every opponent of equal rights
and opportunity to the laborer.
6. Probably nineteen-twentieths of all
those who engaged in rebellion and
sought to destroy the Union.
Z. Practically. all of those who com
PEELED the Nation to incur an indebted.
ness of 81, 900, 900, 900, and who now ask
to be accounted the only true economists
in her councils and the real guardians
of our National honor.
s. Two-thirds of those by whose votes
the Mills bill passed the House of Re
representatives. were bred to the economics
of slavery and believe, as one of them
declared during the debate, that 'the
cheapest labor is the best labor for the
country"
8. Two-thirds of the support the bill
received came from States which con-
tain only one eighth of the manufactures
of the country, pay less than one-eighth of
the aggregate mechanical wages, and
produce but one-seventh of the manu-
featured products.
10. TwO-thirds of its support comes
from region whose ideas of public
policy are based on the economics of
slavery as a cornerstone and who deem
manageable labor" of all things most
desirable
II. In the sixteen states where seven
teen out of every one hundred of the
white voters can not read their ballots,
and where the black voter is not allowed
voice in the government, there were
only sixteen votes against the Mills bill
II. Two-thirds of the support of the
Mills bill and of the party which makes
1t the ground on which it asks the voters
preference comes from those states in
which the laborer has hitherto had few
est rights; whose prosperity has been
least, and whose purchase, conquest,
and control have required the govern
ment to incur more than nineteen
twentieths of all the bonded debt it has
assumed in its hundred years of exist
ence.
13. The major part of those North
and South who insisted upon the sancity
of our National obligation to nourish
and maintain slavery believe in the policy
of the Mills bill and of the party respon
sible for it.
IA. The party which declared the war
for the Union a failure and the green
back unlawful; which opposed recon-
justified the Ku Klux, opposed
the resumption of specie payment, OBJ
the building of navy until it
came into power, prefers a conscript to
a soldier. and Confederate cavalier to
a federal hummer, which holds power
by bloodshed and Uerror-this party
stakes its claim to the voters preference
on the policy the Mills bill inaugurates
10. A party which has a representa-
tive of the Standard Oil in the Cabinet,
and another at the head of the Executive
Committee, clamors for the Mills bill in
order to destroy the evil of unlawful
trusts.
16. Every "dude," who imports his
politics and "lingo' is an advocate of an
English policy for American labor.
II. Every so-called political econo-
mist, who believes that true prosperity
consists in a condition of affairs under
which the rich grow richer and fewer
and the poor poorer and more numerous,
is vociferous in his advocacy of this
policy besotten of slavery and nursed in
rebellion.
Is. Every man who flies the red flag
of anarchy, who appeals to dynamite
and the dagger to make society what he
would have it, sports also the red BAN
dana, which is the emblem of coming
disasters to American labor.
10. To all these things must be added
minority of intelligence, patriotic and
sincere Americans, whose belief in the
universal theory of free trade is so in.
tense as to compel them to train in the
motley company which muster in the
train of that modest type of American
manhood who occupies the White
House, scolds the Senate, and objurgates
the soldier.
No doubt all of these elements are in
the main sincere. The Bystander de-
sires to be clearly understood, as not only
admitting, but insisting on that. Nearly
all men are sincere in their political be
liefs. The political badge usually ex-
emplifies an honest conviction, even
though it be
Now the image of good Queen Bess,S
And anon of bloody May,
All that he seeks to call attention to by
this classification is, whether the history.
experience, training, and inclination of
the classes who are the chief advocates
aid promoters of the Presidential and
Democratic policy in this campaign, are
such as to constitute them good, faith
full, and reliable guardians of the inter
ests of the American wor kingmen.
VINO Has the ''MonopoIists."
The Philadelphia Times makes some
little parade of the presence in the
Chicago Convention, holding transitory
positions in connection with the republi-
can presidential campaign, of lawyers a