Custer weekly chronicle. [volume] (Custer City, S.D.) 1890-1931, 1893-12-09
Cheers in Wales, Tears In America.

november 10Th democratic excDanBe
published press dispatch dated Lon
don, Nov. oath; as follows:
At demonstration yesterday of tin
plate workers at Maestag, Wales, Lewis
Richards, the president Of the district
association, said that the workman had
entered upon period Of trouble and
distress, when the wage earners would
suffer much through no fault of their
own. He believed that the remedy for
the poverty caused by trade depression
was combination. There we're, he said,
more hopeful signs for their trade in
America just now AS result Of protect
i've tariff reduction, and he trusted that
as result there would be long period
of prosperity before them. These re-
marks were greeted with loud applause
So far the paper has not seen fit to
comment upon this particular dispatch
1t might not be good politics, but Il
would be sign of contrite heart ifthe
tin plate filsifiers would make a confes-
sion saying: I'VE confess that the rec
ord is against us. When the tin plate
duty was under discussion we pronounc-
ed it an outrage. We said il would add
to the cost of every bit of tin sold in
America. We said American tin plate
was an impossibility. And in order to
gain point we sent men out with
wagons full Of tinware and instructed
them to charge high prices and proclaim
such prices TO be the result Of the Nc
Kinley tariff In all these things have
we sinned. American tin plate is not
only possibility, it is fact as plant
after plant bear witness. 1t has not in
creased the cost to the consumers as
prices current will show. The McKin-
ley law has been vindicated by the facts.
And the testimony of Europe and Ame-
rica is all to the same end" But no
confession may be expected. Dispatches
like the above will slip into the news
columns of free trade papers unobserved
by the critical free trade eye, but the
editorial page will repeat its threadt>ere
lies.
Note the significance Of that dispatch.
The tin plate manufacturers Of Wales
see hopeful signs for their American
trade, because of protective tariff re-
duction. How about the American tin
plate business The industry in 1892
so promising, now awaits the blow that
is to kill it. The process of its over
throw is the old one that has been the
mainstay of powerful combinations.
The democratic allies Of the Welshmen
in America nave removed the tin plate
duty. The American industries Just be-
ginning business and with an American
wage scale will have to enter a death
struggle with these old and powerful
combinations, who pay their workers
scarcely enough to keep soul and body
together. Having cut prices since 1890
in an effort to hold the American marke.
the Welsh manufacturers will not lack
the nerve to utterly crush their Ameri-
can rivals. When the protecting hand
Of the government is lowered and the
democratic administration winks and
whispers-aside-"go for 'em." 1iH
plate will come down with a vengeance.
And for time tin will be drug in the
market. One by one the American tin
plate mills will close and their en- mployes
join the ranks of that ever increasing
army of the unemployed. When the
fires are all out and the Welshmen
camp on the field of battle in possession
ofthe American market the people OF
this country will pay the bill by paying
to the Welsh monopoly whatever they
may be pleased to ask for the product.
There will be cheers in Wales tears in
America.-Cedar Rapids Republican.