Herald and tribune. [volume] (Jonesborough, Tenn.) 1869-current, 1892-09-22
THE WALKER TARlFF.
Its Effect Upon the Workingmen
of New York City.
selves us WOrk-Our Wives and Child
rem are Starving!

AT this time, when some of the DEM
cratic free trade papers are parading
the beauties of free trade and particu-
larly the great benefits of the Walker
tariff, which was as near absolute free
trade as this country ever suffered, it
may be interesting to many to read the
following article as showing the real
results of that much lauded law. The
extract is taken from the New York
Tribune of January 10, 1S5F.-ED. H.
and 7.
Who is hungry Go and see. You
that are full fed and know not what it
is to be hungry-perhaps never saw
hungry mango and see. Go and see
thousands, men and women, boys and
girls, old and young, black and white,
of all nations, crowding and jostling
each other, almost fighting for first
chance, acting more like hungry wolves
than human beings in land of plenty.
1t is only by the continuous efforts of
two policemen that the crowd can be
kept in order or made to wait till the
food is ready for distribution. Such
scene may be seen every day between
II and o'clock around the corner of
Orange and Chatham Streets, where
, charity gives dinner to the poor, and
soup and bread to others to carry to
their miserable families.
On Saturday we spent an hour there
at the hour of high tide. We have
never seen anything like it before. Up
ward of thousand people were fed
with a plate of soup, piece of bread
and piece of meat, ON the premises,
and in all more than 1000. On the
same day 1,13O portions Of soup were
dealt out from Stewards "soup kitch-
en-" in the rear of the great store, cor
ner of Read Street and Broadway. AT
the rooms on Duane Street for the re-
lief of the poor, ON the same day, they
gave food to 1885. In the Sixth Ward
alone over 6,0)0 persons we're fed by
charity on Saturday, January 13. And
this is only one day in one ward. Mean
while, scenes of like nature are being
enacted all over the city. A procession
of several thousand persons kept
marching about the streets yesterday
with flags and banners which bore such
inscriptions as Hunger is SHARP
Thorn" " "The Last Recourse, " "Live
and Let Live" 1--WE want Work." &c
Such are the scenes that are being
enacted daily before our eyes, while the
cry of hard times reaches us from every
part of the country. The making o.
roads is stopped, factories are CLOSED
and houses and ships are no longer be
ing built. Factory hands, roadmakers
carpenters, bricklayers and laborers ART
idle, paralysis is rapidly embracing
every pursuit in the country. Th'
cause of all this stoppage of circula
ton is to be found in the steady out
flow of gold to pay foreign laborers TO
the cloth, the shoes, the iron and tn
other things that could be produced b!
| American labor, but which can not b.
so produced under our present revenu
system. The convulsion would hav
: come upon us sooner but for the extra
ordinary demand in Europe for bread
3 stuffs, growing out of huge famine
and big wars, and but for the dazzling
and magnificent discovery of gol'
? mines in California, by which har'
d, money, sufficient to buy an empire, ha
!. been called into existence and exporte'
q to Europe. If we could stop the i'm
: port of the foreign articles, the gol'
would cease to flow out to pay for them
and money would then again becom
:, more abundant, labor would then agail
be in demand, shoes, clothing and 9th
er commodities would then again be il
demand, and men would then cease :