Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1890-11-20
Questions nswered-Senator Cul-
lOm and the Free Trade Era of
Depression.
Fixing the Price Of Wheat-Far-
mers and the Benefits Of Pro-
lection.
Cleveland's Record on the Labor
Question, and Other Issues of
the Day.


tariff was low? Did Senator Cullom. in
his speech last August, not make mis-
take when he spoke of the times following
the tariff OF 1916 as free trade time :?
What was the effect of that low tariff of
1852"
Since 1889 we have never had absolute
free trade In this country. Your surmise
is correct, the times referred to are those
when the tariff was low. Senator Collum,
no doubt, meant by free trade time" the
period following 1916, and if you will
read the congressional record of Aug. II,
1890, you will see that Senator Cullom
quotes Colonel Benton for a description of
the bad times following 1916 with its low
tariff. Colonel Benton said,
mo price for property; no sales except
those of the sheriff and the marshal. no
purchasers at execution sales except the
creditor or some hoarder of money; no en-
plOyment for industry; no demand for
labor; no sale of the products Of the farm;
/. no sound of the hammer except that of the
auctioneer knocking down property. Dis
tress was the universal cry of the people,
relief the universal demand"
Miller" Minneapolis, Mimi, writes:
democratic free-trade orators are all the
while telling the farmers that the price
for the wheat and other products grown
In this country is
FIXED IN ENGLAND,
chiefly in Liverpool Is this so, or always
SOP"
But for the receipt of the Milling World
of Oct. 20 we could not have as easily
answered the question, as is now done by
quoting from that excellent paper of the
date mentioned and which see IS to clear
ly convey the information sought:
Certain newspapers, politicians, and
quack orators are constantly asserting that
the price of the grain grown on American
farms is made in London and Liverpool
Perhaps it is, to certain extent, but if
British markets really fix American cereal
prices, how comes it that the prices of
wheat, grain, and -four have advanced
during the past two months IN the United
States, while remaining stationary in
England? There must be screw loose
somewhere. Where is it?''
A democrat and protectionists, asks ::
lit has been said in some paper that the
principal or main cause of the rebellion of
the southern states was for free trade with
England. Is this so?' The article was
simply a quotation from the confederate
constitution, prohibiting encouragement,
or bountics to, or the fostering of manu-
features In the south; also was quoted the
statement made by the three southern
commissioners to England, Yaneey, Mann,
and Rust, to Lord John Russell, that their
government, the southern confederacy,
whom they represented, did not intend to
perpetuate slavery, 5but that ''they wanted
free trade with England" and pointed out
that the largest imports into England
from America were from the southern
states, tobacco. cotton, etc
There is still another proof. 1t is found
in the speech of the deeply lamented the
Hon. William D. Kelley, delivered in the
house of representatives Aug. 3, 1885, op-
posing projected ruinous lowering of the
tariff Mr.. Kelley said:
50 That is the offspring of confederate
sentiment, principle and constitutional re-
striction is thoroughly understood in the
south. 1t is this knowledge that ELECTS
opposition to it from the men of hope and
progress, who expect to establish diversif-
ed industries in every one of the old con-
federate states.
In the course of an open letter to the
chairman of the executive committee of
the free-trade association of South Caro-
lima, written from this city on the 23rd
OF April, Mr.. 1illman, who having served
as a private IN the confederate army from
early In 1862, to the close of the war. md
been member of the forty-sixth and part
of the forty-seventh congresses, and who
now represents the second distict of his
state, said:
shall we of the Palmetto state always
be selt-idolitrous Bourbons, never forget
ting,
NEVER LEARNING ANYTHING?
Was it not our Incorporate zeal for free
trade that led to notification. and was it
not as much to enjoy free trade as pro-
tect slavery that South Carolina seeded in
1862"
Few southerners have been as candid
< and truthful on the question as was Mr..
TIllman. But the intelligence of the
south saw the danger to their manufacture
ing interests should the Morrison bill pass.
hence many Acknowledgements were made
during the discussion of the bill that
otherwise would not have been uttered.
All, however, were admissions that it was
free trade with England that the south
particularly desired, and was the chief
cytuse Of secession.
An Iron Worker" asks = "Will you
obhge us by publishing just what Sir
Henry Bessemer said about the amount of
money he made in making steel in the old
SouliI " dio pledSe SttIS Wu6IueT tn6 dig
fortune lie made, was through the patent
or from manufacturing only"
At the meeting of the British and Ger
man iron and steel makers at PittSburg
lately, Sir James Kitson read a paper,
which had been prepared, expressly for
the occasion, by Sir Henry Bessemer,
showing the origin, etc. of
BEssEMER STEEL,
and which concluded: ''Some idea may
be formed of its Importance as a manu-
facture, when | state the simple fact that
on the expiration of the fourteen wears
term of partnership of our Sheffield firm.
the works which had been greatly in
creased from time to time entirely out of
revenue, were sold by private contract for
exactly twenty-four times the amount of
the whole subscribed capital of the firm,
Notwithstanding that we had divided in
profits during the partnership a sum equal
to hfty-seven times the gross capital: so
that, by the mere commercial working of
the process, apart from the patent, each of
the five partners retii ed after fourteen
years, from the Sheffield works, with
eighty -one times the amount of his sub
scribed capital, or an average of nearly
cent per cent. every two months-a result
probably unprecedented in the annals of
commerce.
Iron worker" probably well knows the
difference in the amount of wages paid in
England and America to the workmen en-
ployed IN the relative works, and how the
, lower wages in England so materially aid