Bismarck weekly tribune. [volume] (Bismarck, Dakota [N.D.]) 1884-1943, 1892-05-13
tleman be permitted to proceed five
minutes MORE. There was no objection

Ilouldu 10 poTLulltoU W prOCoou i've
minutes more. There was no objection
and Mr.. johnson proceeded as follows:
Gentlemen of the democratic party may
safely 90 to the manufacturing districts
with this bill m say: "See here! We are
protectionists. or course we are; we are
the original, simon pure, none genuine
without our name blown in the bottle. We
believe in protection. We have given evil
here in this bill by protecting your labor
with a 80 per cent. duty on manufactured
wooden goods" But in kind of a stage
whisper they say: while we believe in
high protective tariff for the benefit of the
manufacturer on his finished product, we
the farmer on his wool. These people
living away out on the prairles of Dakota
and In the far west are engaged in prOduc.
ing raw material; that is unSkiIled labor;
nobody cares for them. We will protect
you manufacturers with a 80 per cent.
tariff against your competitors in England
and France, while we expose the farmers
the fierce competition of the Australian
and South American sheep raisers."
Tell me that wool is a raw material!
That may be all right in the factories, but
with us the rain and the sunshine n the
grass are raw material and wool is a fin
ished product.
The raw material of the sheep breeder.
was an ungainly primeval beast with long
coarse hair and horns resembling the
Rocky mountain goat, while his finished
product is the improved merinO prize sheep
exhibited at the fairs with a twenty-pound
fine wool fleece on his back.
The gentleman from Nebraska [Mr.
Bryan told us the other day of the ram
that Abraham found caught by the horns
in a bush, and Of the Home1ic sheep that
carried Ulysses and his comrades out of
the giants cave. Such great brutes as
those could never be profitably kept for
their wool. They were raised for their
hides, horns, and mutton.
They were the raw materials from which
the intelligence of man in the course of
thousands of years has evolved the
beautiful merinO of modern times.
The sheep breeder is therefore cult
waiting the finished product of thousands OF
years of human endeavor. We have i'm
proved sheep, however, more in fifty years
in America than was done in many
centuries before, because we have applied
skill, Intelligence. and industry to the
care of them. In 1860 the fleece of our
sheep weighed only 26S pounds each; now
they weigh six pounds.
Your theory of raw material and I'M
skilled labor will not work. II you 60 to
our people and tell them that they are not
employing a high grade of intelligence in
their sheep husbandry, that they are not
employed in a skilled occupation, they will
probably, in a most dignitied manner, ask
you if they are not as intelligent peo-
pie and just as worthy of the protection
and care of the democratic party as the
people who are spinning. the wool and
weaving it and attending to the machines
in New England factories. Applause on
the republican side.] The democrats usu-
ally tell us in the west that a protective
tariff exists for the purpose of helping the
the farmers. But this bill, the first fruit
and evidently the most tempting sample of
democratic tariff reform, gives 80 per cent.
protection 10 the manufacturer and sweeps
away every vestige of protection to the
farmer. Great is Diana of tariff reform!
Applause on the republican side.]