The Bennington banner. [volume] (Bennington, Vt.) 1858-1894, 1892-02-05
THE FRYE wool" PETITION.

THE FRYE wool" PETITION.
Those wooden manufacturers who sign
the Wool Consumers petition to Con-
gress for the passage of the Springer bill
present the most astonishing exhibition
of political guilelesSneSs which has been
seen in New England for many a day.
They desire free trade in everything
which comes into their mills, but they
insist upon "suffiripnt protection" for
everything which goes out. We miss
our guess if their childlike and bland re-
quest isn't received with roars of deri-
sive laughter when it is offered in the
House of Representatives. The South
ern and Western Democracy has already
made known with sufficient emphasis its
contemptuous opinion Of this PROPOSE
ton. "That kind of tariff REFORM" it
says, "may do for the latitude and longi-
tude Of Massachusetts, but it will not do
for the latitude of South Carolina OF
Texas, or the longitude of Illinois or
Iowa"
IliNNN ''hAliN'h ''iiNi NNNANlh L'NlliO-
cratic Representatives were elected on
the understan ling that after they had
smashed the iniqutous Republican cur
rency laws, so as to give their constitu-
entS cheap money, thew were to smash
the imQuirouSlicpublican tariff so as to
give them cheap clothes. As one of the
leading Democratic organs of Mr. Mills's
State. the Fort Worth Gazette, puts it:
Massachusetts is in favor of free raw
material and protected manufactured
goods. Texas is in favor of both being
free, and if there is any tariff that it be
on raic material like uooi and hides {"
Our free wool manufacturer can easily
surmiSe whether the Massachusetts or
the Texas idel will find the greater favor
in Congress with $40 Democratic ma
jority.
Congress is not obliged TO adopt free
trade because the duty is taken off of
WOOL" plead these amazing "innocents,"
in their modest request for Sufficient
protection" Well, they will find that
the Democratic leaders differ with them
radically on this point. "rhe keystone
of the arch of protection" declares
Henry Watterson, sis wool" And he
adds, significantly, that "the Democratic
party is free trade party or it is moth
ing" Who has the better right to speak
for the Democracy, this battlescarrcd
veteran of "reform,' or some Mugwump
New England manufacturer?
These free wool petitioners touchingly
refer to ''the protection of labor" But
do they not know that the whole idea
that labor can be in any way protected
by tariff duties has been secuted and de-
MED thousand times by the sapient
statesmen whom they are addressing !?
Do they not know that it is fundamen-
tai tariff reform principle that pro-
tective duty benefits nobody but the
''robber baron" manufacturer himself :?
They contend that the wool tariff is a
fatal clog to the progress nf the Ameri-
can wOOlen industry, but they scrupu-
lousy ignore the fact that it has grown
in the past thirty years twice as fast as
the American cotton industry and six
times rs last as the wooden industry of
Great Britain. They declare that the
tariff has led to the increased use of
shOddy in American wooden mills, but
they refrain from any reference to the
fact that more than twice as much shod
dy is consumed per capita in England as
in the United States.
These free wool gentlemen have been
laboring hard for the election of a Dem
ocratic Congress. They have secured it,,
and now they are obviously afraid of
what it may do. They beg for free
matem us" and sufficient protection"
on their finished products, but they may
make up their minis thar if the Demo-
cratic purity ever gets control of both the
Legislative and executive branches of the
Government Texas will dictate the Dem
ocratlc tariff policy, not Massachusetts
If Drmoc attic Congress ever deprives
the wool grower of his protection the
manufacturer will have to give up his
protection, too.