The weekly register. [volume] (Point Pleasant, Va. [W. Va.]) 1862-1909, 1889-08-28
Free Raw Materials and Pro-
lection.

lection.
If the sincere friends of the pro-
tectivc policy are wise they viii no
longer resist the admission of all
raw materials, not chiefly the pro
duct of labor at homo, which wonld
enlarge our industries, cheaper nee
essaries to consumers, increase tho
demand for and wages of labor, sup
ply our home markets with home
materials and open new markets
abroad for our products. Free raw
materials are now a supreme neces-
sity to many of our manufacturing
industries and they are absolutely
essential as integral part of a judi
cions and permanent protective
policy.
If the friends of protection doubt
this admonition, let them dispas-
sionateIy note the emphatic utter
ances of leading proteetionists in
various sections of the country. Sem
ator Blair. Of New Hampshire, has
lately publicly declared his purpose
to demand free coal, free iron ore
and other free raw materials for the
New England factories. Governor
Ames, Of Massachusetts, has just
signed petition to Congress de-
handing free coal and iron ore and
the reduction of duty on pig and
scrap iron and steel, and Wdde's
Fibre and Fabric, a leading organ
of the wooden interests, now speaks
with emphasis in favor of free wool.
II points to the closing of iron and
wooden establishments as conclusive
object lessons in favor of raw ma
terial to protect and enlarge our
American industries, to give increas-
ing demand for labor and reduce
the present oppressive cost of neces-
essaries of life. In point of fact every
American manufacturer is more or
less crippled by oppressive taxes on
raw materials, and the high tax on
wool, that protects no labor at home,
simply protects the mills and labor
of Europe by denying our manufac-
turers the free raw materials given
in every other protective country of
the world.
Free raw materials have become
an essential element of protection to
American labor, and if we would
maintain the true protective policy
of protecting the wages of American
workingmen, we must enlarge our
free list to embrace wool, hemp, coal
with Canada, with greatly cheap
ened chemicals and dyestuffs, and
with salt and lumber added to the
free list to overthrow monopoly
combines and aid labor by cheap
ened necessaries of life. Iron ore
is chiefly labor, and whether it
should be free is simply question
whether our general industries
would be benefited thereby; but
all doubts should be received in.
favor of free raw materials for our.
important industries. The necessi-
ty has become SO great for an adj
vance in free raw materials for
the maintenance of protection to
American labor, that no party can
stand against it. The cry of free
trade has lost its effect, and intelli-
gent men of all parties now under
stand that free raw materials with
protection on our products to the
full extent of the difference in
wages of labor here and abroad, is
now the only true standard of pro-
lection to American workingmen.
Any other basis of tariff taxes must
be either for the destruction of our
industries or for the special pro-
lection of monopoly trusts, which
cheaper wages and increase the
cost of the necessaries of life. Let
all be honest in the advocacy of
protection and the protection of la
Dor will be invincible; but if protec-
ton shall be prostituted to greed
and oppression, it must prove its
own most dangerous foe.-Phitade1-
phta Times.
The trusts of the country have
advanced tho prices on almost every