Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1894-01-15
DESTRUCTION Us. PROTECTION.


protection. The tariffs have been
such that the manufacturer has been
protected from the foreign capital
ists who has been contented to invest
money in factories where it might
bring in a return of three per cent.
Under this condition of things hum
dreds of millions have been invested
in building manufactures. All the ma
terial, labor and skill required has
been furnished in this country; under
this influence hamlets, villages and
cities have sprung up in abundance.
Under protection influences thous-
ands-millions- have found work at
prices such as the rest of the world
knows nothing about. These men
have built homes, which have been
made happy by almost all that neces-
sity, and much that luxury has de-
manded. Under this regime the chill
dren of the laborer have been well
fed and clad and educated in good
schools, academies, and oftentimes in
colleges.
Under this system the farmer has
found in the manufacturing town a
class of consumers who could purchase
his products at prices that have made
farming a good, if not always a profit
abl, ,ebusiness. The farmer, though he
may sometimes feel that he is not re-
ceiving all he ought for his labor,
never saw the day when he had SO
much in house and barn and tool
shed that helped to make life hap
py and his labor easy; he never saw
the time when his faithful COW Or his
honest hen ever brought in an income
which would purchase such an amount
of things necessary in life as they are
now doing. The merchant, the pro-
fessional man, the laboring woman,
every class, except here and there,
where something exceptional occurs,
were never more prosperous than
now.
The enormous expense of maintain
ing government-made enormous by
the results of war and the tremendous
growth and size Of the country has
been met in a way that has scarcely
been felt or known. Much Of the
money expended has found itself, in
the first round it has made, paying the
laborer for work the pensioner for his
wounds and the clerk for his services.
Under the protection system the rev.
enues have been largely paid by the
laborers and the produce Of foreign
countries; no matter what is said to
the contrary, this is the fact.
Under the system Of protection, the
wealth of the country has increased
beyond all precedent. No one denies
this. iThe great debt and destruction
Of the war has been largely paid and
overcome; railroads costing into the
billions have been made; cities and
towns without number have sprung
up; states and territories have been
created and peopled; enterprises un-
known elsewhere in the wide world
have organized and been carried for
ward. All this under the eyes and in
the knowledge Of one single genera
ton. This has all been done under
protection. Certainly success OF SO
great magnitude would prove to the
average mind that the system is be-
nefcent one.
To day the President and maiori-
ty in congress, for reasons that amount
to mere theories, are bent on a sys-
tenn of destruction. They propose to
increase by a large number the list of
articles and products that are coming
from the mines, the forests, the farms
and the factories of the country; they
propose to admit free of duty very
large class of products which are Ell
ther grown or made in countries where
the laborer is paid small wages or a
mere pittance, putting the same on
a market already we'll filed with the
same articles which the miner. the
chopper, the workman and the farm
er have produced at prices which now
seem to them none too remunerative.
Hence it means destruction to facto-
ries, to business and to opportunities
for labor. So intent are the free trade
and low tariff people in carrying out
their pet theories that they admit that |
lower prices and lower wages will be |
the result. So they would have it
come to that that the laborer must |
place himself on level with the pow
erty wages of England, the peon wag-
es of Italy Or Mexico, and the farmer
must sell all his produce at CORES
pondingly low rate.
Destruction against protection; low
wages against high; poor prices
against good. Possibly men may live
st under the Democratic idea, but it
will be sorry time for the debt paw