The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1892-08-20
LABOR DEMAGOGUEs AND THE
TARIFF.


think the mining strike and rio. in Ten
nessee was due to? Surely not to the
tariff, for these mines are working against
the competition of low-priced convict
labor hired out to contractors by the state
authorities. The Mckinley tariff surely
is not responsible for the convict labor of
Tennessee which fixes the price of miners
wages against which the free miners rebel
and riot.
The other day in France there was
coal miners riot because the mine officials
dismissed a union man. The rioters
mine. Nobody in France ascribes this
riot to 'the tariff" and yet the Home
stead riot was due to the same cause as the
French disturbance. The only difference
was that Homestead rioted because several
hundred union men we're discharged while
the French miners rioted because one man
had been dropped out.
There is something excessively stupid
in this holding the tariff responsible for
riot in one state and declining to hold it
responsible for riot in another state; when
everybody of intelligence knows that had
it not been for the tariff there would have
been no Carnegis mills at Homestead; no
mines in remunerative operation at Cgur
d'Alene.
The official statement of the members of
the executive council of the American Fed
Grafton of Labor, declares that every
dollar of financial aid which can be raised
should be given freely to help this struggle
Of Drawn and brain, muscle and heart,
against the cold-blooded, grasping avarice
of we'll protected manufacturers"
This reads exactly like the red-mouthed
rhetoric that Dickens in "Barnaby
Ridge" puts into the mouth of
that wretched little anarchist, Sim
Tappertit. The relations of labor and
capital are reciprocal, not antagonistic,
and this description of "brain, muscle and
heart" pitted against ''cold-blooded, grasp
ing avarice of well-protected manufacture
ers" is a lie. The report of Democratic
Congressman Oates denies that the en-
ployers at Homestead were other than hui
name, liberal and just employers; it states
that the wages averaged for $500 men of
all sorts over So day.
OF course, the manufacturer has been
well protected; if he had not been there
would be today no mills at Homestead
employing $500 men at exceptionally high
wages.
Does the American Federation of Labor;
do the leaders of the riot at Homestead
want protection taken from these manu-
facturers? Of course they don't; they
know perfectly well that without protec-
ton to rule out foreign competition their
high wages would be cut down one-half
tomorrow to the level of foreign labor.
These demagogues, who know that pro-
lection has built up these industries; has
maintained the level Of American wages
far above that of foreign labor. are guilty
Of falsehood and disingenuousness when
they hold up to public odium the SWELL
protected manufacturers; they know that
they have been Weg paid because the man
ufacturer has been well protected; they
know that both American capital and
American labor, that both employer and
employee are alike dependent for their
prosperity upon protection, and for this
Federation of Labor to denounce the
"wellprotected manufacturer" as if pro-
lection had been labor's worst enemy in
stead Of its best friend, is as false and
ungrateful as it would be to bite the hand
that feeds; to curse the bridge that carries
you safely over the stream.
This Federation of Labor ought to have
FIVE years of tariff for revenue only in
punishment for their stupid malevolence
and ingratitude. When under that tariff
for revenue only "the well-protected man
ufacturer" had become extinct where
would the executive council of the Amer
lean Federation of Labor be2 Their voca-
ton would be gone with F'the well-pro-
tected manufacturer" that they paint as
the .'avaricious, cold-blooded, grasping"
enemy of labor. With mills silent
or working on half time and
wages cut down one-halt what
would this precious executive council of
the American Federation of Labor think
then about the situation2 ''The well-pro-
tected" manufacturer would be gone to be
sure, but with him his tiourishing BUSH
ness and his ability to pay high wages
would be gone too.
How would the Federation of American
Labor like that situations We suspect
they would find out that if '.the well-pro-
tected manufacturer" is half AS "cold-
blooded. grasping and avaricious' as they
describe him he would either go out of
business or cut down wages to the level of
foreign labor. Business is not phiian-
thropy: the man who attempts to do busi-
ness on the basis of philanthropy soon
goes out of business. and when labor
talks about the reciprocal relations of
labor and capital being always a conflict
of heart, brain, soul, Drawn aad muscle"
against cold-blooded, grasping avarice"
then lapor is playing to the galleries and
the lowest pit OF politics.
IL is this kind OF labor demagogues that
pick the pocket of the worEineman; that
teach him 10 initiate the stupid fellow who
not content with getting the golden egg,
wrung the neck of the goose that laid it.
and then eviscerating the goose found no
gold: he had his dead goose fer his pains,
but his gold mine was exhausted.
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