The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1889-08-15
EFFECTS OF THE TARIFF,

The condition of the coal miners at
Braidwood, Illinois, and Brazil, Indiana,
has been the subject of much comment,
anu the tariff has of course figured in it
largely. An eastern exchange whose pro
clivities are largely Republican. states the
case thps: If the duty on soft coal were
removed, would it stop the importation of
Italian and Hungarian miners! 1t then
goes on to say that if the tariff was the
cause of these importations, it would look
as if it had itself created high wage sys
TEN, and that this had attracted such
laborers from abroad. 1t intersperses
with such silly chatter as the foregoing
numerous references to ''free trade" at
taching it first TO President CLEvELAND's
great message of 1887, then to the MILLS
bill, and generally to everything and every
body having a tendency toward reform of
the tariff laws.
The plain facts in the case are that the
Republican press and Republican states
men find themselves confronted with an
awkward predicament. They pGghted
their faith and mortgaged their honor on
the proposition that the condition of the
laboring man should be improved, in so far
as an advanced scale of wages could affect
such an improvement, if the HARRISON
ticket should be elected. BY thus bam-
boozling sufficient number of workingmen
the nefarious scheme succeeded and the
Republican party was given four years
more of power. There is no use of attempt
ing to dispute the logic of facts; in the alb
sence of Congress, no reasonable person ex
pected measures to be pressed through and
become laws at once looking to the amelio-
ration of the laborers' condition; but they
all expected, were led to expect and had
right to expect that the immediate effect of
an administration pledged to the mainten-
ance of high tariff would be to influ-
ence markets and men so that an upward
tendency regarding trade, rates of compen-
sation and so on would be indicated on the
national barometer The fact that the result
is exactly the reverse-that wages have
abruptly fallen to very great degree, and
almostuniformly- makes the situation of the
Republican party the more unenviable, and
they are confronted by a condition born of
their theory, which is very perplexing, to
put it mildly.
The press and orators of that party are
en1eavoring to explain things away. AS
well sing psalms to dead horse. People
who can be caught by such fanfaronade as
was given them by the Republicans last
year are not of the reasoning kind. They
were promised certain things in certain
contingencies, and the latter having ma
terialized they want the goods delivered.
They also want to know why it is that not
only are the large promises not kept, but
something as far the other way as could
well be imagined be upon them. soft
words butter no parsnips" with them; and
they will have fulfllment or settle
ment. The statement that foreign contract
laborers being here and working for wages
at which the home worker cannot live is the
result of a high wage system maintained by
a protective tariff, is but adding insult to
their injury and perpetrating a gross and
dismal falsehood at the same time. 1t also
partakes somewhat of the nature of self
qualification; for where are the benefits of
a tariff which consumers have to pay in
order to cut off competition from abroad,
when it brings another and ruinous compe-
tition from the same sources According to
the protectionists, the tariff is an unmixed
benefit in one breath, the next one being
employed to admit that our. coal miners are
being worked OUT by cheap Italian labor
ers who were attracted here by the protec-
tive principle prevailing
Why cannot those protection people be
honest, now that the election is over and
there's nothing of consequence to gain i'm
mediately by dishonesty! Has damned
custom brazed'' them so that they
do now by force of habit what
they did before for the sake of