Frostburg mining journal. [volume] (Frostburg, Md.) 1871-1913, 1893-07-01
Wool and Coal.
The Cumberland NeaoS says:

The Cumberland NetcS says:
Now they have some dreadfully cold
weather up around Frostburg in winter time,
and the JOURNAL feels the necessity for good,
heavy wooden blankets, and wants the man
mathematical who asks for tariff upon the
foreign articlein order to benefit the American
manufacturer.
Foreign wool free of duty is desid-
eratuan Of peculiar to the Ameri.
can people, especially American poor
people. AS rule the foreign wool is
finer than the home product, and just
in proportion as it is mixed with the
latter is the blanket fine or coarse.
The tariff, therefore, measurably
prohibits s0ftness, which as a quality in
blankets, is quite as desirable as
weight, and the degree of prohibition
is determined by the wealth or poverty
of the consumer. If the consumer be
wealthy he can afford to boycott the
home product and buy blankets whose
materials are not only grown abroad,
but fabricated there. If he be poor he
must be patriot enough to get only the
coarse blanket, homegrown and home
made, his slim purse can afford, and
be willing to do the penance of sleep
ing under it.
But the selfshness of the JOURNAL in this
respect limits its range of vision, and it cam
not see the blanket-maker in equally bleak
and storm-ridden New England lowering
over his little fire and cursing the coal baron
who makes him pay seventy-tive cents more
for ton of Georges Creek coal to keep him
warm, as an offset for the protection that
gives him the labor by which he lives. 1t
seems strange that these two parties in inter-
est in this great economic question cannot
see that they must stand or fall together;
that the one must pay little more for the
coal that keeps his hearthstone cheerful and
cosy in order to furnish the other with the
means to purchase the blanket he makes and
Uice versa.
Perhaps the JOURNALS Grange of
vision" is not only Limited" but
maybe the JOURNAL is actually blind.
Perhaps, on the other hand, the
Neeos' picture of the shivering blanket
maker is over-touched.
Because there are his neighbors, tho
tanner and the shoemaker, working
up free foreign raw materials with
home products, but who has heard them
"cursing the coal barons?" Boots
and shoes are quite as essential to COM
fort and health as blankets, yet rel
atively they are the cheapest necessities
available to the people, because they
are the only articles of wear whose
bases are not taxed.
Why, then, should the blanket
maker and coal-miner "stand or fall
together ?"
In better terms, why should the
miner ego in cahoot" with his blanket
maker and ostracise his shoe maker?
Why should he form coalition of
interest with the man who furnishes
HIM coarse goods at fine quality prices
and let the greater benefactor continue
to look out for himself?
And why should government, the
Good Samaritan of high protection,
become party to the compact between
the blanket-maker and miner, and
leaye the shoemaker to the mercies of
the Levites
And why should government impose
the double martyrdom of wearing a
high-priced, rasping undershirt on a
miner as penalty of protection" to
offset d reward of "protection ?"
What is the so-called ''protection" of
coal worth to him if he has to purchase
an uncomfortable living at artificial
prices?
AS matter of fact, the duty on wool
is the hook which catches the agri
cultural gudgeons. Nothing else-not
even mutton, that the farmer produces
can be "protected."
That he is fooled by 1t makes him
the loftiest monument to the science
of partisan gallibility there is III the
political universe.