Democratic Northwest. [volume] (Napoleon, Ohio) 1869-1894, 1893-01-26
OUT IN THE COLD.
THE ADVANCE m COAL COSTS THE
CONSUMERS $5o,ooo,ooo.

We are having an unusually cold win
ter. In all of the northern and some of
the southern states there is great suffer-
ing. If all of the millions of human be-
ings now poorly clad and insuficiently
fed and housed were entirely responsible,
by Incidence or improvidence, for their
sad plight, it would be useless to waste
time on the matter. 1t is, however, a
fact that 90 per cent. of these unfortu-
mates are men or persons who either do
the hardest kind of work for ten or twelve
hours day or who are earnestly search
ing for work. 1t is also a fact palpable to
all thinking men that with our multi
piled machines and inventions for saving
labor any man capable and willing to
work in sparsely populated and fertile
country teeming with raw materials of
all kinds like our own country ought to
be able, with even less than ten hours,
work day, to sustain himself and fam
lily in comparative comfort. If, then,
neither nature nor the inventive genius
of man is at fault. the trouble must be
due to governmental mismanagement
In short, the interests of the people are
and have been betrayed by ythe politicians
who make the laws. Until today COM
paratively few men own and control the
sources of production and the machinery
of distribution, so that large numbers of
their fellow beings or subjects are liter
ally left out in the cold.
Special privileges have been given to
corporations and favored individuals.
The supply of anthracite coal is practi-
cally in the hands of single corpora
ton. This corporation has advanced the
price of coal over one dollar per ton, in
creasing its annual earnings about $780,
100000. Of course the millions of pee
pie in the east who are so unfortunate as
to want fire and who depend for fuel on
the great storehouse of coal in eastern
Pennsylvania, put there, as it appears,
for the special benefit Of the Reading
combine, cannot consume as much coal
at $6.25 as they used to use at S. per
ton; consequently a part of the mines
are locked up until supply will equal
demand at the new figures. The situa-
ton is real aggravating both to those
shivering with cold and to the miners
out of employment and suffering fer
food and clothing. The aggravation is
not lessened by the fact that up in Nova
Scotia is another storehouse of coal, with
in easy reach of the New England and
middle Atlantic states, to which access
is denied by the duty of seventy-fve
cents per ton, put on by style of con-
gresham now going out of fashion for
the purpose of compelling the Yankees
to purchase of the Reading combine or
freeze.
The same situation is repeated with
our copper mines, iron ore mines, silver,
lead ore mines and borax mines. In each
case monopolies control natures store
house of supplies, and our congress has
sanctioned the monopolies by putting
duties on the foreign competing products
to compel the free" American people to
pay the exorbitant prices for the supplies
beneath their own soil. The manufac-
turers of sugar, starch, steel rails, axes,
knives, barbed wire, rubber goods, glass,
paper, hats and hundreds of other arti-
cles are controlled by trusts favored by
tariff legislation to take from the poor
to give to the rich.
1t is gratifying to know that senti-
ment is rising that promises to sweep
away some of those combines in the near
future. This sentiment has become so
conspicuous since election that it is COM
mented upon by the protection journals
and papers.
But many kinds of products are not
controlled by trusts. In such cases con-
gress has done what it could to assist
the larger producers at the expense of
the smaller ones. The masses of the
people who are comparatively poor are
laborers, mechanics, clerks and small
farmers. Those who own the factories,
mines and means of transportation are
few and comparatively rich.
1t is not in the power of congress to
legislate in favor of the poor as against
the rich, but it is in its power by giving
grants of land and by passing tariff laws
to restrict outside competitors to greatly
aid the manufacturers and mine owners,
and incidentally, by increasing ground
rents, the landlords. The rich have of
course appreciated" these favors by
large contributions to keep their friends
in Office. For thirty years this implied
compact has been in force. Each year
the terms become more grinding on the
poor until now suit of woolen clothes
or pair of woolen blankets costs in our
monopoly markets about twice what they
sell for in free markets. Hence it is that
the poor, who cannot afford woolens, for
the sake of appearance compromise by
wearing shoddy or imitation woolen
clothing in the daytime, but for the most
part make no pretensions to cover them
selves or their families with woolen
blankets at night. They are but poorly
protected from the cold and have to eat
more food for this reason to keep life in
their bodies. But food also costs more
because of the duties on sugar, rice, fish,
vegetables, fruits and nuts, and on the
glass, tin plate or stoneware necessary
to preserve or transport food articles.
Duties on lumber and other building
materials increase the cost of houses and
add to the already high rents which the
poor are compelled to pay.
Tariff taxes compel the poor to wear
poor clothes that cost more than good
clothes cost in Europe; to eat cheap and
insufficient food; to pay higher rent Oh
live in poorer quarters; to go cold for the
lack of. cheap fuel; to do less work for