Iron County register. [volume] (Ironton, Iron County, Mo.) 1867-1965, 1888-08-30

/ pay. w nile Am on this subject OF the Ia
boring man let me call your attention to
does not raise prices. Well, il it does not
raise prices. would like to know why the
manufacturers, or so many Of them, are in
| favor Of it. Do they want q high tariff to
lower prices? Laughter and applause. |
There are instances in which o high tariff
has lowered prices for special and peculiar
reasons, but as q general rule, as have
already shown you by what I read from
Mr.. Adams report and from other authori-
| ties, the tariff increases the price. If it
| did not increase the price you may be sure
that manufacturers and monopolists would
| not want it, and II it does not increase the
price, pray what is the projections Where
does that come inl They are SO much
afraid OF our getting things cheaper in this
country than they can be manufactured
here by reason of the pauper labor, as they
| call it, Of Europe. Well, if the tariff does
| not increase the price of the articles
| which we buy and which are manufactured
| here, where is the protection to the Ameri-
can manufacturer, and how, If the price is
not raised, can they pay better wages to
the laborers But there is one class of Ia
| borers that l want to call your atten-
ton to especially: There is one class of
| laborers who have been, according to the
claims of the Abolitionists and Republic
ans their especial wards, who have been
| especially under their guardianship and
for whose interests they feel the most Pc
culiar and earnest solicitude. These are
the negroes. The result OF the war was to
free about four million of negroes land am
very glad they were freed. They have in
creased now to be about six or seven mil
lion. Now, how do those negroes make
their liyingl A great many of them go to
town and pursue any kind of handicraft
they can. They go into domestic service,
black shoes, shave faces, or do other
things of that kind. But the country ne
gro makes what he gets by cultiva ting the
earth throughout the whole South. How
does he cultivate it He either has bought
some land-and some of them have bought
a good deal-or he rents land. Whether
he cultivate his own land or whether he
rents it, the crop he gets from it is the re-
Enumeration for his toll That crop in the
main consists Of cotton, some corn, some
little wheat, but mainly of cotton. Now,
how can the high protective tariff benefit
that negro. He raises cotton and has for
his share of the crop four or five balls each
year. There is no tariff on cotton, gentle
men. 1t comes in as free as air. The price
of cotton, therefore, is not raised, as they
say, or lessened by this tariff tax, and yet
this is all the negro has for his labor. He
can not get cent more for his cotton by
reason of any high protective tariff, and
he doesn't get a cent less. He has to sell
it at the price fixed in the foreign market,
the price made in Liverpool or London,
which places the price upon cotton export
ed from the United States. It is there
that the price of his cotton is fixed and for
that price he has to sell it, tariff or no tar
iff. How is it on the othe:. hands Although
he is living in a pretty warm climate, the ne
gro wants to be decent and comfortable, and
he wants his wife and children to be CON-
Portable. They need clothing as well as
other people, but upon every thing the
negro buys to clothe himself, to clothe his
wife and his little piclzaninnies he is taxed
by the high protective tariff and is COM
PEELED to pay higher price than he other
wise would have to pay, so that so far as
he is concerned there can be no pretense
whatever that the tariff is any thing but
an unmitigated injury to him. He has
nothing to sell which is benefited by it.
He performs no labor that by any kind of
argument can be shown to be benefited by
it. He sells his cotton at price fixed in a
foreign country. because he can not sell it
for any other price, and upon every thing
he consumes, every thing he purchases for
his consumption, he has to pay an increased
price, and is thereby injured. Now, do
think our abolition friends especially ought
to take this into their most careful consid-
Grafton. They say that they freed the
negro from slavery. I am willing to grant
them all the credit, although there might
be something said about who did it. Per
haps 1000, 600 Democratic soldiers in the
army might have had something to do with
it. But give them all they claim. Do they
mean after giving him freedom to make
him slave by compelling him to pay high
er prices upon every thing he has to use,
not for his own benefit, but for the benefit
of somebody elsea Is it not enough that
they made him a slave by requiring him to
vote for them and swear not to vote for a
Democrats Isn't that enougha Must they
also take all his little earnings by COMPEL
ing him to pay for every thing he wears
and every thing his wife and children wear
more than he ought to be required to paya
PROTECTED AND UNPROTECTED LABOR.
Now, my friends, while am on this sub
ject of the laboring man, let me speak of
American labor as compared with the
laber Of other countries It is true that in
America the laboring man generally re-
ceives more wages in money than they do
in foreign lands, but by no manner of
means to the extent that you may suppose
from hearing SO much said about it. For
instance, let me give you the following
facts: According to the last census Great
Britain had population of 401 to the
was 97% cents per day. New England has
21O to the square mile, and the average
wages are $LO2 per day; about cents
more than in England. Ohio has eighty
to the square mile, and the average wages
are s1.06 day. Colorado has two to the
square mile, and wages in that State aver
age S1.45 day. The entire United States,
not including the Territories and the Dis
trict of Columbia, has twenty four to the
square mile, and the average wages are
81. 12 per day. What fact does this estab-
lish! Does 1t not prove that the more
dense the population the greater tho COM
petition among wage-earners and the lower
the wages, and the reverse proposition,
the less competition among wage-earners
the higher the wagesa No man can deny
that, who has any regard for truth.
That is it. Now, my friends, you
hear great deal said about the
pauper labor of England, especially be-
cause our chief imports are from Great
Britain, that is England, Ireland and Scot
land, and yet you see in that most prosper
Gus State of Massachusetts, the greatest
manufacturing State of the country, the
averages are only about four cents more
than they are in England. But if you take
the purchasing power into account. as you
must do, the wages are just as high in
England as they are in Massachusetts,. IA
gentleman on the platform: "Higher."] I
don't know but what they are. They are
as high, certainly because in order to as
certain hAw much man is obtaining by
his labor, how much his earnings tend to
support him and his family, you must take
what IL costs him to live into account, and
If it costs him more to live in one place
than it does in another, although he gets
mora WA Oas IN the irst nj aco fhon ho 6ooa