St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1893-12-22
TALKS OF THE LABoRER.
High Tariff Declared His Only
Safeguard.

Safeguard.
Whatever can be said of the people of
the United States, nothing can be more
truly said than that the distribution of
the proceeds of united labor and capital
has been among them more even and fair
than anywhere else ON earth. There
have been great accumulations of CAPT.
tai necessary for the worlds develop
ment all over the universe, but in the
United States all this has been accom-
panied by the nearest approach to gen.
eral distribution that the world has ever
seen. This has not been all owing to
the tariff, but the tariff has been the
foundation Of it. Labor organizations
have played a great and useful part
in this distribution. Men in
general, who employ labor are
no more naturally disposed to
pay high wages under tariff than
those who exploit the laboring man
under free trade; but the tariff, by Civ
ing steady employment under the infu-
ence of sure market, by establishing
the organization of industry under the
factory system, has given to organized
labor the material to work upon, the
fund of which it has demanded distribu
tion-a fund so great that it could never
have been eQualed or even approached
in the comparatively isolated life which
the unprotected industries, taken alone,
would have given us as a people. Pro-
lection has established the clusters of
great manufacturing and working CEN
far y.rhi priu ha
possibility of existence, which no scat
tered population could ever have Gre
ated.
Take one example from this very bill:
BituminouS coal is one of the great in
dustries which is developing the state
of West Virginia; upon it the welfare
of that state largely depends, so its
Democratic governor testifies, and many
of its most respectable citizens, includ-
ing an ex-senator of hOnOred name. Is
that development confined to that state
alone? By no means. With the addi-
ton of the coal fields of old Virginia
the Norfolk q Western, the Chesapeake
d Ohio obtain from those mines a very
valuable freight in transporting coal to
the Seaboard. From other bitnminous
coal fields, the Baltimore 81 Ohio, and
even the great Pennsylvania road, OBJ
tain no inconsiderable part of their
freight. If coal be made free, there will
be more fierce competition with the
coal of Nova Scotia, and not only will
the mines of West Virginia or old Viz
ginia and Pennsylvania suffer, but the
great railroads will suffer severely. To
be sure, these are corporations without
souls, but the stock and bonds are
owned by people with souls, unless
modern political infidelity should de-
termine otherwise. If in the United
States there are higher wages and
higher cost of capital, there must be
such barriers against goods from abroad
as will
EQUALIZE THESE HIGHER COSTS,
or the products of the United States
cannot be sold except at losa. Sales at
a loss cannot last long. There is always
a constant demand for lower prices,
which demand has to be listened to IN
country alwaya striving to ward higher
plane of civilization. We have, there
fore, before us always three problems
wages to be maintained, hours of labor
TO be lessened and prices to be lowered.
Not one, but all.
1t is true that invention at once keeps
pace with and regulates the demand for
higher wages and lower prices and
fewer hours, which are the conditions
OF our higher plane Of civil cation, but
it cannot do more. 1t cannot meet in
addition the lower prices OF a lower
level of civilization. Our inventions
are too quickly absorbed by foreign
countries to permit this. Hence the
result Of a refusal to protect our labor
atits present rates must result in 10 wer
wages. This seems capable of a rough
demonstration. Our goods are now met
by foreign goods ON our own shores at a
price made up Of raw materials, plus
labor and plus the present rate of tariff
on very nearly equal terms. If the tariff
element be lowered, then something
must be lowered Oh our side, and in the
last analysis it will be labor and capital:
in the long run, the loss Of capital is
also loss of labor. for capital employs
labor, and lost capital sets no machinery
III motion. We must, then, meet the
reduction of price of foreign goods,
which are our competitors, by reduction
of the price of labor