The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1889-09-05

an army can always upon their own volt
ton go elsewhere and seek new fields Of
occupation, since they have become so
habituated to that one place, with its diff
ferent channels and grooves, its ms and its
outs, that TO them it is home however harsh
and severe its daily discipline may be. But
so many people within so narrow com
pass, amount to a national menace when
for several days in succession they have
been poorly fed and in a portion of the time
have eaten nothing at all. A hungry man
is, if possible, worse than hungry tiger,
and his threats are more to be regarded be-
cause he is more capable of lasting mischief.
OF course the men evinced no DISPOSE
ton to break the law, Englishmen rarely
do. They are too loyal as class for that;
but for that writer to proceed further and
attempt to show that their condition and
their determination were the result of
English free trade is such conclusion as
ouly Republican in search Of plea would
make use of.
The facts are that London is too thickly
populated for its area and resources. The
laboring people, while not paupers nor al
together dependent, are too numerous for
the amount of work to be had as rule;
and when aggregations occur as to the
numbers wanting work in the place when
there is least of it to get, the result is a
decided bubble of more or less tempestuous-
ness.
Why is it that the Republican party so
particularly and persistently selects Eng
land as an examplar of the doctrine? Why
does it not occasionally, at least, look at
the other nations of Europe! Why not
take Belgium, where of late strikes have
been more numerous than in Great Britain,
and consider in connection with their in
spection that the former has a protective
tariff in force! Why not go to Germany,
where wages are fully fifty per cent. lower
than in England, and where, as in the
United States, there is a special and in
some instances a proscriptive duty upon
almost every article imported. Let them
look at France, with its tariff almost as
great as that of the United States, where
twenty-five cents day is the average rate
of laborers' wages and the grade of civil
cation and degree of cultivation are largely
behind the scale of England, and then an
swer satisfactorily why it is that the latter
nation and it only is selected as the especial
criterion on every occasion. We can afford
to make the challenge boldly, for the rea
son that no satisfactory answer can be
given.
The plain facts are that the Republican
party is well nigh "up stump in its
efforts tosfnd secure Judgement. Free
trade England is more prosperous, happy
and contented than any other nation of
Europe, and that party knows it. But
with its innate dishonesty it needs must
show that wages are higher here where
there are five hundred or more acres of
land to everyone at the disposal of the man
of moderate means in England, and the
resources here are correspondingly greater.
We have advantages here which that cOun-
try never can have, because nature has
decreed it otherwise. But. since our
friends the enemy have to go across
the ocean for an argument with
which to support themselves for a
few brief years longer, why can they not, if
their position be tenable, give US the whole
of the situation there! Do they really be-
lieve the American people are fools, and
that they will attribute the worAingmen's
disturbances in London to free trade, and
that. even if they do, they will control the
efforts of the Democracy here to establish
tariff reform as the same thing! For their
own sakes, we hope not. The most menda-
cious part oft all is the statement that no
such spectacle has been witnessed in this
country since the adoption of the protective
system. Those who can remember the
great railway strike of a few years ago; the
great longshoremen's strike; the strikes in
the coal fields of the east aud the strikes
that have been upon US almost continuously,
and nearly all the outgrowth of the villain
Gus Republican system of high tariff, will
say as we say, that liars ought to have bet
ter memories.