The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1894-02-11
SOCIALISTS BROUGHT TO BOOK.

Roubaix is thriving manufacturing
city of France of $4,000 people which in
is32 elected mayor and city council of
pronounced socialistic views and on .
frankly socialistie platform. Their ''elec-
torai programme" consisted of fourteen
articles, aud proposed, among other things.
TO furnish school children one meal 9 day
and two suits of clothes year, to suppress
taxes on the necessaries OF life TO essah-
iish an eight hours' day with guarantee
of at least minimum wage. promised free
employment bureaus, free medical advice
and medicines at cost. tree legal advice in
"all matters concerning workingmen, and
declared in favor of paying city officers no
higher salaries than those received by
skilled workmen.
The socialist mayor and council have
now been in control of Ronbaix for one
year. What have been the resuitsf The
project of feeding and clothing school
children was carried ont only in the case
OF twelve schools and I, 500 children. This
cost the municipality $4,000. Had the
system been applied to the whole city it
would have cost $4,000 yearly. As it is,
the city expenses under this socialist sys-
TEN for 1893 were more than $50. 600 greater
than for 1892. The money has to be raised.
1t viii not do to increase the taxes on the
workingmen, and the council is at its wits
end trying to devise some scheme to pay
the huge cost of the new government with
out touching the pockets or the feelings OF
the workingman.
They proposed to levy octroi taxes 30 as
to hit the bourgeois OK middle classes only,
so they left the common kinds of cheese
free and taxed Brie and Guyere. Then a
roar of indignation rose up out of the ranks
Of the workingmen, because the council
proposed to tax fine cheese 80 that the
poor man could not afford to buy 1t.
This council Of Roubaix is composed of
thirty-six members, Of whom twenty-eight
are saloonkeepers. There are 5000 saloons
in Roubaix. This sociaiistic council took
trip to Guise recently. and turned in bill
OF $50 each-the railroad fare, 1t may not be
without pertinence to remark. Is $S-a rate
of expense that recalls the expense of a
congressional funeral train. This social
istic council has increased the mayors
salary from $500 to 81. 7oO
The other day in Holyoke, Mass, where
the regular wages of day laborers Is 81. so q
day when hired by individuals, the city
council proposed to pay such laborers 81 a
day, and IN order to that effect was passed
over the mayors veto. The mayor said:
"If We had this work to do for ourselves,
the cost to be paid from our private purse,
would we pay more than the market
price?" The aldermen and councilmen
did not dispute the mayors assertion that
$3.50 day was the market price for labor
Of the class in question. nor did they seek
to meet his argument that the city govern
ment had no right to use the peoples
money in paying higher rates than are
paid by individuals for the same work.
They simply stood their ground and voted
again for the 81 order, because they wanted
to pose as 1.-THE friends of the laborinr
man."
OF course this is an act of Utopian folly,
for government has no money except
what it raises by taxation OF the whole
people, and it was just as gross swindle
on the taxpayers to pay labor 50 cents
above the market price as it would have
been to pay so cents more thousand feet
for gas than private users of gas were