Freeland tribune. (Freeland, Pa.) 1888-1921, 1892-05-12
WORKINGMEN SPEAK.
THE kENSlNGTON REFORM CLUB OF
PHILADELPHIA PETITIONS.

Begin With.
The following is part of the petition
sent to congress by the Kensington Re
form club of Philadelphia, an organiza
ton composed entirely of workmen il
the highly protected textile industries:
While labor is the most directly in
terested in the arrangement of tariff
schedules it has been customary fo,
those who have favored high protective
duties to turn deaf ear to its appeals de
spite their protestations of solicitude fol
the welfare of the toilers. The clamors
of those who find special interest in
high duties, having the time and means
to besiege the doors of congress, have
not been unheeded. The fat they fried
out of the workingman enabled them
to render special service to the partisan
machine, and thus they could make
their weight felt far better than the
fieeced workingman.
Now, however, that there is once
more an opportunity for labor to be
heard upon an equal footing with the
capitalists, we, the Kensington Reform
club, as an organization composed of
working men in every branch of the
textile industries, send greeting to the
friends of fairplay and honest and equal
government, with a prayer for the i'm
mediate passage of free wool bill now
under consideration in the house, which,
while it may not fully meet our desires,
is yet a measure offering great relief to
the whole people.
The labor in the woolen industries has
never been in so depressed condition
as in the past year. The carpet indus
try was never so demoralized. Wages
have been reduced both in direct way
and by the various suterfuges called ad-
justments, readjustments and fines, and
yet the cost of living has been percepti-
bly, increased until the condition of
labor is well nigh unbearable. Employ
ment has grown more unsteady, many
mills working but partial time, while
in others the waiting for warp and fill
ing amounts to loss of from one-quar-
ter to one-half time. This is no idle
talk, but the result of investigation, as
it is one of the missions of our organiza-
ton to intelligently watch the effects of
legislation upon labor, and we may here
add that there has never been an increase
in tariff rates that was not almost i'm
mediately followed by reduction of
wages. This is surely contrary to what
was promised as the result of the tariff
law passed by the last congress, and is
it surprising to find workingmen realiz-
ing that they have been fooled once too
often?
If, as has been asserted in congress
recently, the manufacturers do not need
or want a high tariff, and it is sole
ly for the benefit of labor, then there
is not the slightest impediment to an
agreement about it's abolition. But
since the gentlemen who make this as
sertion still oppose reduction, the
workmen who don't want it either are
certainly justified in praying that those
kind souls may stop their benevolent en-
deavors to raise wages by law, which
they can't do, and set about raising them
in the mills, which they can do, and if
they will only give to the workmen that
which they otherwise give to the party
machine the workers will be able to buy
for the mills.
We here reiterate the fact that the
greater cause for the inability of the
American manufacturers to compete
with their foreign rivals is because of
the unjustifiable tax on the raw materi-
ais, and not the differences in wages,
and that this tax amounts to from three
fn Al fha fira
account in the product. 1t is needless
for gentlemen to imagine that they can
forever fool the workingman by their
expressions Of solicitude for wages while
yet willing and anxious to bear the
enormous burden of this unnecessary
tariff tax on the raw materials. To the
workingman of ordinary intelligence
this looks like trying to find excuses for
the further reduction of wages, for SO
long as they can be made to believe that
their wages are princely as compared
with the wages of workmen on the other
side of the water, they may be induced
to submit to reductions without know
ing that they are rapidly nearing the
level of the ''pauper labor of Europe"
Workingmen are praying deeply just
now that their protectionist friends may
stop awhile their hard labors to raise the
wind by tariff laws, so as to take time
to give their professions practical turn
by raising wages in fact. But if we may
judge men by their actions, we are justi-
fed in asserting that if these profession
al friends of labor thought that tariff
would raise wages, they would drop it
quickly.
In recent number of The Manufac-
turer, the organ Of the protectionist
manufacturers, its editor, in labored
article, tried to show that the English
manufacturers were selling their goods
here as cheaply as they did before the
Mckinley law went into effect, and de-
ducing from that, that the foreign man.
ufacturers were paying the tax for the
privilege of selling in our market In
another article of the same number the
fact is stated that Botany tops have
declined in price in England sixteen
cents per pound, and this is given as a
partial reason for their ability to sell as
cheaply as before the increase of the