St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1892-08-28
DOES TARIFFPROTECTLA LABOR
In the East 1t Protects the Foreign
Not the American Laborer,

To see the true force of this state
ment. just imagine there were no such
country as the United States, and then
by all the laws of inductive reasoning
you would have the strongest kind of
argument in favor of free-trade Eng
land as against the high protectIve-tariff
countries of the continent on the Ques-'
ton of wages. Senator Frye has UNI
consciously but naively pricked his own
bubble. But we can find good illustra-
ton nearer home. The Minnesota and
Dakota farmer is not directly protected
in his farming operations in the sense
in which the manufacturers of iron
and steel and of cotton and wooden
goods are, and yet the wages of agri-
cultural laborers in Dakota and Mime
sofa are relatively higher as compared
with agricultural laborers in Europe
than in that of the directly protected
industries mentioned, and much more
certain and regular and far less subject
to fiuctuatiOn.
want to call Senator Frye's atten-
ton, and only do so in response to his
Boston speech, to his own New Eug-
land for moment, for | think it is in
this matter to some extent as in the
missionary cauSe-One need not always
go abroad in search of heathens. Less
than generation ago nearly all the mill
hands and factory operatives Of
New England were her own chill
dren, the sons and daughters of New
England farmers, mechanics and trades
men. And now am told by reliable
men, whose word | cannot doubt, that
all this is CHI anged. Their mill hands
and factory hands are how mostly for
eigners - mainly Canadian-French -
while their own sons and daughters,
those who before constituted their la
Dor fol ce, all go West, SO that one could
almost without eXaggeration say that in
New England the tariff protects not
American but Canadian labor. Now, if
1 were one of those wicked free-traders
with whom it is the fashion to class
every one who believes in any form of a
tariff reduction, | might say, "Your
high tariff has driven the flower of
your youth out West-behold how dan
gerous." But it has done nothing of
the kind.
The selfish greed of the New England
manufacturer has reached out for cheap
Canadian labor, while the polar star of
the great West. our boundless and free
for-all public lands, have drawn thither
the growing cream of New England, the
concentrated essence of the Pilgrim
fathers, and l am glad of it, for
there is no human being / so
love and admire as the New England
Yankee transplanted to our boundless
and exuberant West. There they are
all, like myself. believers in a just low
tariff, as l have defined it. And in
proof of this, and by way of rejoinder
to the copious clippings from English
| papers INDUCED in by some on the grave
dangers threatening us from free trade
| lowing letter from transplanted and
most worthy sou of the Granite State,
who is and has been Il lifelong Repub-
| lican-one of the leaders, in fact-and
| one of the leading business men and
| chief flour manufacturers of Minneap-
| oils, Hon. Charles A. Pillsbury:
Dear Sir: have been meaning to
write you for some time, saying sils,did
] be very sorry not to have you continue