Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1893-12-13


Neither the complaint of a surplus nor of
100 much revenue survive, but, unfortunate
Iy, the new administration must have more
revenue. Certainly, however a free trade
tariff curtailment would not seem to be a.
safe and proper tonic to increase revenue
or 10 stimulate business enterprise, and
could not fail to seriously augment the pres
ent Hnancial discouragements. Nor will a
democratic administration be likely to ex-
cite our admiration by any dimfnution of
the public debt"
Wages Here and There.
in Great Britain" the speaker said, mo
wage Garner ever rises to be an employer of
wage earners. In the United States it is a
common occurrence, and almost the rule
that the head or business manager of any
Industrial company has risen from the ranks
Of practical manual labor. The biographies
Of our captains of industry, when we look
aloft in the history of the American people.
shine forth as aDundantly as the stars of
the milky way. Free trade, with only fine
words to wage earners wears the air of
aristocratic condescension, but protection
helps with love like brother.
1t has been long roundly, perhaps ignor-
antly, claimed that the difference in wages
here, compared with the lower British
wages, is compensated by the lower cost of
living; but this has no basis of truth, ex-
cept that the lower scale of wages practi-
cally and brutally imposes upon British
wage earners a lower and far inferior scale
Of living. If their provisions and comforts
of life were to be made equal to those of
wage earners in America, the British cost
would be found excessive and insupport-
able.
''The foundation Of England's large wealth
was laid by century Of stringent tariff
protection-such as extending trade in
woolens by making 1t unlawful to bury the
dead in anything but woolens-and it may
be admitted that the early results of free
trade increased her foreign commerce; but
that commerce is no longer greatly increas-
to- md rff tSI, rarfo in aplx all
rections are smaller than imports Other
nations have learned the magic of steam,
Of machinery and of skilled workmen, and
no longer welcome British merchandise to
free-trade markets. Decrepit free trade, in
fact. is slowly dying with the home discon-
tent of Great Britain, and is already
caput mortuum everywhere else.
British wage earners, We all know.
obtain on the average under free trade but
little more than one-half as much reward
for labor as Americans obtain under pro-
lection. How long free trade will be per-
petuated even in Great Britain, in the face
of suffrage extension, will be determined by
the popular vote. and its funeral obsequies
will not there be wet with the tears of
wage earners. True its CHASTITY features
may be briefly galvanized with the tender
to all foreigners by the democratic party of
the home markets of the American conti-
nent: but that continent also wields a pop
ular vote. and their sober second thought
waits impatiently for utterance."
The Ways and Means Committee.
THAT a free trade tariff might. could. or
would be the order of the day, with protec-
ton wholly eliminated, was grimly pro-
claimed by the refusal of the majority Of
the ways and means committee to allow the
minority any participation or knowledge as
to it's construction. presumably for the rea-
son that the minority of five would have
outvoted the majority of twelve. or that con-
tact with them in the committee room might
introduce some dangerous germs of proter-
ton, now supposed to be unusually contag-
ious to which no democrat should be pitt
lessly exposed. And yet the incubating ma
jority, like other biddies that hide away
while In labor, gave notice by loud cackling
when they added an egg to the revenue
only nest.
LAS their formulated blind-man s-buff
work comes to light robust forgetfulness
Is exhibited by the exclusion of all the wise
precedents of the past: but will they forget
the resonant admonition Of the Ith of No
vember. reverberating from Iowa to Massa-
chusetts? 1t is to be hoped, in the words Of
old Sam johnson, They will remember who
kicked them last
1.-The advantages of a protective tariff are
not claimed on account of its production
and diffusion of wealth alone, but on ac-
count Of its benefcence, its educational and
civilizing influence. it's distribution of the
comforts Of life among the men who work,
and as the strongest arm Of national inde-
pendence.
THE favored portion Of our country with
the longest summer days now wants protec-
ton on rice and sugar. and how long will
1t be before 1t may be wanted against Egyp-
tian cotton? 1t has the option, through its
control OF the party now dominant of MAIN
tanning the political economy of tariff pro-
lection and thereby of making progress in
the front of all rivals, with the full indus
trial force of its entire population, or of ac-
cepting free-trade economics, faith without
works, and thereby forever to lag in the
rear by leaving the larger and superior half
or It's population excluded from many avail
a a r0r NINA
other unframed half, with no hope of any,
thing better. segregated in precarious work
fields by day and in hostile political camps
at night"
A Dismal Failure.
In conclusion Mr.. Morrill, said:
Free trade as an economic science in the
Judgment of the world, is dismal failure
Even in England, one of their most dis
tinguished countrymen, in view of its total
lack Of sysmpathy for the welfare of labor
ing men, declared that '.the acceptance Of
the current doctrine of political economy is
standing disgrace to the human intellect {"
In America, also the leaders of free trade
or of "a tariff for revenue only" care no
more for the welfare of a laboring man
than for that of 1.-The man in the moon"
and deride all protection as ''paternalism," !"
dismissing 1t with a sneer as the demand
of an inferior and unworthy race
One great difference between those who
now favor protective tariff and those who
favor revenue reform appears to be that
the protective party seeks to find work and
good wages for the many, while the reform-
ers are struggling to find good wages WITH
out work for the many in the executive
patronage pasture, but that pasture even
with the paramount aid Of Honolulu is
likely to be overstocked.
/ have thus attempted to show that "a
tariff for revenue only is a royal relative
of free trade, kissing at sight, and that free
trade In it's gloomy and only home is not
without many serious drawbacks, which in
the United States would be unadulterated
calamities. multiplied in number and aggra-
waited in character, and that in comparison
with a protective tariff it has no attribute
which should find favor with any American
citizen.
1 am 10th to believe that our country will
consent to have q thoroughly tested revenue
system permanently superseded by an ex-
perimental change so revolutionary that
even the convention made index of it's reck-
less character served to suspend or pros
trate fearful number of important Ameri-
can industries. Our farmers, who. next to
wage earners, are to bear the brunt of such
disastrous change, having their products
on the free list raw materials and the
consumers becoming producers, will not fail
TO learn that the swap of protection for free
trade, in accord with the British pattern,
is the surrender and shipwreck of the home
market, twenty times more valuable, for the
foreign without the remoteSt chance of any
extension of the latter. Wage earners also
Will not lag behind in the discovery that
W be oil Of IA rff for