Los Angeles daily herald., 1888-10-28

cruel bondage of an insidious taxation
which drains their resources and woult
keep them and their children band o
hirelings. l believe such men as Cleve
land are sent for high and importan
purpose. 1 see Washington iron
unhesitatingly the power of .
British king; 1 see Jackson, will
the righteous rage and strength
of Sampson, throttle the United States
bank; / see Lincoln, with divine faith
in his troubled heart and divine passion
in his sad face, strike down slavery;
see Cleveland shifting with the might o
a giant gigantic wrong the last relic o.
feudalism on our continent, and then
say that God reigns in the history oi
nations.
am told and know that there are
honest voters in this land who think
that tariff for protection is blessing
to the toiler on the farm and in the mill.
Let us talk it over then like honest men.
Let us think it over day by day until
November. If then we still differ the
rest of us can live where the most OF us
can. Let me tell you what l think
about ir.
If protection is blessing, let us ali
have it. If one should be protec ed all
should be protected, and each should
have protection equal to the other. But
that brings us where we started in-on
an equality. That is not protection
that is equalization. Equal rights,
equal privileges, and equal burdens
is the opposite to protection. That
will not suit the lumber king of Maine
or Michigan, who wants me to pay So
more for every 1000 feet of lumber than l
would have to pay if 1 go few miles
further on and buy across the line.
Therefore he wants protection. Protec-
ton against whom? Why, protection
against me. Think of it! Protection
against me, his neighbor, living under
the same government with him, on the
same soil, and under the same precious
flag. But what injury to him do pro-
prose, against which he wants to be pro-
tected? He simply wants to be pro
tected against my buying that that lum-
ber elsewhere! And what does he do?
He is not strong enough alone, so he
confederates with the iron man, and
both of them confederate with the salt
man, and then all three of them confed-
crate with the blanket man, and all four
Of them confederate with the carpet
man, and then the glass and pottery
man is admitted, and behold we have a
Northern confederacy as dangerous to a
poor white man as the Southern Confed-
eracy was to the black mani This is the
genesis of protection.
But what is it? What does it signify?
Simply system by which some Ameri-
cans are benefited at the expense of other
Americans. You and 1 are the other
Americans. 1t is a system by which
those confederates make you and me buy
from them, and pay them more for a
coat, sidewalk, barn or a barrel of
salt than if we were free men and could
buy where we pleased. How am 1 pro-
tected? 1 own no mills; have no salt
wells; am not the proprietor of blan-
ket factory do not make chinaware
nor carpets.
But hear that the tariff tax supports
the government. What the government
gets out of the tariff is revenue. Barring
an unhealthy surplus, no one objects.
But we are not talking of revenue, we
are talking of protection. The Northern
confederate shall not steal from me in
the name of revenue tariff.
But protection is the question. How
am benefited by it. 1t gives employ
ment and good wages to labor, hear
If the protected factory will render an
annual account, deduct interest and
clerk hire, and divide the profits
with its workmen, then the stater.ent
is true-otherwise it is pitiful sophism,
and all the more pitiful because so
many hungry man in our cities, with
pale-fsced wives and ill-clad children be-
lieve it. Listen to me one moment,
workingmen! The bravest and best
friends the oppressed ever had, men
like John Bright, Golden and George
and nameless host of true hearts and
clear thinkers, have denounced and ex-
posed that sophism a thousand times.
Men that would die to better your lot,
tell you that it is delusion. You your
selves know that the the factory imports
cheap labor free of duty, cuts down yonr
wages by their competition, adds the
amount Of the tariff to the cost of the
article, and pockets the profits. You
and l must pay their price because the
same article made elsewhere is excluded
by the confederate tariff, and so your
wages, cut down by imported competi-
tion, are next absorbed by higher prices
on all you buy.
But 1 hear that protection furnishes
the farmer home market. 1t does. Let
us be honest. If protection is a good
thing for us all, want it. 1t does fur
nish the farmer home market. But
the thing that troubles the farmer is not
a question of market. The world must
buy from him. The world must 60 to
him to be fed. If he stays at home the
world will hunt him up. He is not in
any danger of finding no market. The
question with him is not the market but
the price after he gets to market. Liver
pool, the commercial center of the agri-
cultural world, tells the farmer what he
must sell at, and the Northern confeder-
ates tell him what he must buy at.
Liverpool registers the rise and fall oi
that supply and demand which fixes the
market price for the farmers grain. The
Atlantic cable tells him what he will get
high tariff legislation tells him what he
must give.
Do not let us deceive ourselves in this
thing. Remember that protection is sys
tenn by which some Americans are bene.
fited at the expense of other Americans
Remember that it is kept alive by North.
ern Coniederates. l don't like a South
ern Confederacy, and don't like North.
ern Confederacy. do not like it wher
Southern Confederates cornered the labor
of the black farmer, and don't like il
when the Northern Confederates corner
the labor of the white farmer. There il
a spirit in this land that will al.
lou, nathan Stotoo nor citizpps tO cOm.