New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1891-10-19
1rSSoN FROM EXPERIENCE.

tn preyent human misery, 10 increase human
bappiness is the most sacred OF all dutieS.
Shall we not Get rid of the notion that the sacred
thing is to care for the spirit though the BODY
NAV starye? Are we to forget that the All
wise Teacher and Example spent most OF Ills
life in healing bodily diseases AMI sweeping
away the banGage of suffering from the eyes lie
wished to enlighten? What is duty, them II
there are at hand two distinct paths, OF which
one removes and the other increases human
suffering? If one enables thousands to 1--we
happily by their own honest industry and the
other derives them of that blessing, is not the
choice a matter OF duty
Forty-fiye years ago, July 30, 1916, the
Walker tariff for revenue having passed the
previous day, THE NETWORK TRIBUNE said
{" We fear that thousands on thousands who
would have been steadily employed and com
fortabIy situated through the coming winter II
| this bill had not passed, will now be destitute
of employment and dependent on charity Tor
bread" After this came California gold fam
inc in Europe, and other events which only
deferred the effect of the act, but THE TRIBUNE
of January 10, 1855, described in graphic
words a state Of things which has not been seen
at any time since, as follows:
who is hungry $50 and see. You that are fulfilled
and know not what IL is to be hungry-perhaps never
saw hungry mango and see. Go and see a thou
sand men, women, boys, girls, old and young, black
and white OF all nations but one-therc are no Amer
cans-crowdng and jOstng each other almost hghting
for a first chancc-actng like hungry wolves than
human beings in land Of plenty. Such a scene
may be seen every day, from IL till O'clock around
the corner of Orange and Chatham sts, where Linden
muller gives dinner to the poor and soup ana bread
to Others TO carry to their miserable families On
Saturday we spent hour there at the time OF high
| tide. We have never seen anything ike III DciOIe
on Friday upward Of thousand people were fed with
plate of SOUP piece Of bread and piece OF meat on
the premises and in all upward Of sixteen hundred on
the same day 1130 portions Of soup were dealt out
from Stewards soup kitchen in the rear OF the great
marble palace store Of Readcst and Broadway
. At the rooms in Duane-st for the relief OF the
| poor Of the Sixth Ward, the same day, they gave
food TO two thousand two hundred and ffty-sx. AT
the Five Points House of Industry, the same day.
IL Is calculated that thousand meals we're given
say seven hundred different persons fed Counting
the number at the Old Bowery Mission at only half that
number we have In the Sixth Ward, total OF over
six thousand persons fed by charity on Friday January
II. . Recollect this is only one day in one ward
1t is scarcely possible by any words to add
to the force of this object-lesson. National dis
aster has come since the Protective policy was
adopted, but never such disaster. Short crops
the Civil War with all its horrors, widespread
commercial calamity, have never brought back
70 NeW-YO the scenes witnessed when " tar
if for revenue only'' was in force. Merchants
and bankers by the thousand failed when the
Civil War broke out, but the laboring millions
were abe to earn their bread. MiSfortmeS
have come since Protection began, but have
never reached the laboring millions so far that
the distress of 1855 under the revenue tariff
has been reproduced. The generation now liY-
ing has never witnessed, has no personal ex-
perience, of the painful consequences which fol-
lowed the reduction of duties to a revenue basis
in 1916.
Surely no humane, no patriotic or right-think-
ing citizen will treat with Indifference the
lesson which this contrast teaches. If tariff
for revenue only meant soup-kitchens for 5000
people in single ward thirty five years ago,
what would it mean now, when vast number
of additional manufacturing establishments have
been brought into existence, and been enabled
to employ an army of operatives by the Pro-
tectiye policy in force since 1861? 1t is not
possible to withdraw the defenceS to which great
industries owe their very existence in this cOun-
try without consequences which no change Of
duties prior to the last thirty years could have
produced. 1t is q question which every man
must answer for himself whether he has a
right to bring upon millions of his fellowciti
zens such disasters, by adhering TO party which
still b,indly follows its theories of fifty years
ago. in spite of all the suffering and distress
which they have caused.