The times. (Owosso, Mich.) 1882-1897, 1888-08-24
SOME PERTINENT ANSWERS.
Questions by the Labor Candidate for

q - - as4sAresioe"I IA - go
Mr.. Cowdrey, candidate of the Union
Labor party for president, is free trader
and asks some questions that arc eagerly
quoted by Democratic free trade organs.
One Of them Is as follows: ~ IMN
"Have you over seen a protected manu-
facturer pay higher wages than he was
compelled tor a M
No, and we have never heard that manu-
facturers in free trade countries paid more
for labor than they were compelled to.
Manufacturers under any tariff system
viii buy labor as cheaply as they can. But
IL Is easily conceivable that manufacturers,
in consideration of an assured home mar
ket protected from foreign competition, are
willing to pay the higher wages which
such protection enables them to pay. They
make just as much money as If they paid
the European rate of wages, and are natu-
rally averse to the labor troubles and
fierce competition in products that would
result from free trade and the inevitable
reduction of wages. In that respect the
interests of manufacturers and working
men are identical. Here is another of Mr.
Cowdreys questions:
eff protection prevents us from selling
in foreign markets, does not protection
make less work instead of more?'
Protection may prevent us from selling
some manufactures in foreign markets.
But it does not make less work instead
Of more" except for foreigners. Hkeeps.
out foreign products and therefore makes
moro work instead of less for American
workingmen. Free trade would food our
markets with foreign products, reduce
the amount of work to be done here, and
reduce the wages for what remained to be
done. We consume 90 per cent. of our
products and export only 10 per cent.
Our homo market is, worth, therefore,
nine times as much to American working
men as the foreign market. What folly
it would be to imperil or sacrifice the home
market for the uncertainties of foreign
tradel Mr. Cowdrey continues his ques-
tioning:
''If there is free trade in labor and high
protective prices for those things which
laborers must buyIs not the laborer being
robbed instead of benefited?"
Is not free trade in labor bad enough
without free trade in the products of
labor? Would the evils of Unrestricted
importation of labor be made any more
tolerable by the unrestricted importation
Of the products Of labor? The importa-
tion of foreign labor and the products of
foreign labor are one and the same thing
in their effects upon American labor, and
no man in his senses can argue that the
one can be q. cure for the other. 7s ~ .
We have not heard any complaint from
workingmen as to the high prices of pro-
ducts, or of being ''robbed" in the pur-
chase of food, clothing or other articles.
Products of all kinds are cheap. A few
of them might be cheaper for time under
free trade until our homo industries were
destroyed but we have not heard any
workingman say that. he is willing to &C
cept lower scale of wages on the chance
Of getting cheaper products. II there Is
any workingman who is willing to'accept
lower wages for the sake of getting his
clothes q little cheaper let him speak up
Cheaper products means cheaper wages,
and as little that the workingman buys is
affected directly by the tariff, he has lit.
tie to gain and much to lose by free
trade tariff for revenue only policy. One
more question from Mr.. Cowdrey and we
have done: n W. nix ltlt'3a
'If.unprotected industries pay the same
wages as those that are protected, are
they not as valuable, and, if SO, why
burden them by making them pay heavy
taxes to the protected ones?" a 81
By unprotected industries" Mr.. Cow
drey refers to carpentry, bricklaying and
other mechanical employments whose
products cannot, for obvious reasons, be
imported. They are, in fact, protected by
q natural barrier that is higher than any
tariff, for we cannot import houses and
immigration does not at first onset ma
terially affect their employments, as i'm
is mainly Of unskilled labor.
But close our mills and factories by free
trade, and the higher wages our building
mechanics enjoy would soon be brought
down by enforced competition in their di-
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT Leader.