Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1894-05-08
Where the Responsibility Rests.

ID mocratic journals, after demonstrating
to their own satisfaction the responsibility
of Protectionists for the enlistment of the
tramp armies under Populist leaders, are
another object lesson of the "pernicious
system" of favoring home labor by legisla-
ton. They describe the riotous workmen,
who have been assailing and destroying
factories where recently imported and
cheaper labor has been employed, as acting
upon the principle that they. were entitled
to determinations in wages and were jusu-
fed in protecting their interests by brute
force and criminal lawlessness when manu-
facturers were enjoying the benefits of
class legislation. A more monstrous per-
version of the protection policy can hardly
be inns g ned than is involved in these parti-
san Trades, remarks the N. Y. Tribune.
1t is true that the Republican party in the
last presidential canvass, as in previous
campaigns, labored to convince wage
earners that their interests would be i'm.
perilled by the election of Mr.. Cleveland.
1t warned them that in supporting the
Democratic party they might be voting
themselves out of work, since importations
that displaced home products would dispense
with home labor. 1t admonished them that
under lower tariff there would not only
be less work done in America, but also that
what was done would be fer less money,
since home manufactures would have to be
cheapened in order to be kept in the field
against European manufactures, and there
was only one way of accomplishing that
object-that of cheapening labor. Loss
of work and lower wages were the
two Republican predictions made on
every Platform in 1892 as the result of
Democratic triumph. Those forecasts have
been fulfilled during the last twelve months,
when every business interest in the country
has been paralyzed by the menace of a
lower tariff. American wage earners now
know to their cost that the Republican party
WAS right when it told them that vote for
Cleveland was vote for less work and
lower wages.
Which party, then, is responsible for the
riotous demonstrations of une mployed work.
men who are resisting the attempts of en-
ployers to cheaper labor. Not certainly
the Republican party, which had defended
the industrial policy of employing home Ia
Dor in preference to importing the products
of foreign labor, and of maintaining so far
as possible the existing tariff system with
wages averaging 100 per cent higher in the
United States than in England. The Dem
ocratic party must not only settle the &C.
count with wage earners, who are either out
ofwork or whose wages have been cut down,
but they must also assume the responsibility
of the labor outbreaks and tramp process
ions. That party has considered it neces-
sary to deprive American workingmen of
employment, to provide foreigners with
work and to equalize wages in the United
States and continental Europe. 1t must be
held accountable if these results are not
brought about without labor riots and the
s~arming of tramp brigades in all parts of
the country.
Not only were the interests of capital and
investment adjusted to the industrial sys-
tenn, against which the Democratic party
declared war in 1892, but those of labor as
we'll. American workingmen had become
accustomed during generation of Repub-
licsn protection to being better paid. more
comfortably housed and more prosperous in