The representative. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1893-1901, 1895-05-22
A MINNESOTA LETTER
TO AN ENGLISH PAPER
How a Foreigner Sees His Adopted
Country.

y
(Our 49,. friend, Seth Bottomley, a
strong and original thinker, recently
wrote q letter to Lancashire, England,
paper, about the tariff, wages, the DEM
ocratic party, the timber thieves, etc.
It Is interesting reading and we repro
duce it, while not affirming all its views.
There are Englishmen and English
men. There are those who would plum
der and destroy the world, like the ras-
Gals who are now giving away opium
the deadly habit and thus create mar
ket for their hell-making drug; and
there are Englishmen like Bacon, Hamp-
den, Milton, Wilberforce, Chatham, Liv-
ingstone and our friend Seth Bottom
ley. 1t must not be supposed that be-
cause we denounce the monsters we
are rejecting on the good men. Birth,
after all, is an accident; and there are
honest men and scoundrels in all ma
tions. Ed. Rep
Sir: From a friend we received the
Reporter of Dec. 1, 1894, in which ap-
pears letter from Fall River, Mass,
U. S., written by an ex-Ashtonian. The
writer is so far "off his base" in attrib-
uting the present hard times in this
country to the democratic party and
their tinkering with the tariff laws"
that I thought I would help him and
others in the same fix to remount, and
show them how they happened to get
thrown. To show that 1 am entitled to
All opinion on the subject, if not to
speak as one having authority, 1 will
have to give little of an account of
myself. 1 am Stalybridger, and was
formerly weaver at Leech's, where my
. father worked for John Leech as a
dresser for 80 years. In 1859, when 81
years old, emigrated to this country,
working at my trade at different places
in the cotton mills of the States of Mas
sachusetts and New Hampshire, finish
ing up my career as a weaver in the
very Fall River from which your great
or gradely-political economist writes.
This was in the spring of 1861, at the
commencement of the great rebellion.
The mills going on shrot time, L took
occasion to go out West to see our folks,
who at that time resided in the State
of Missouri; knocking around and work.
ing at anything could get TO do until
the fall Of 1862, when 1 went back east
to the State of Massachusetts. Not be-
ing able to get work weaving, learned
wOollen spinning, soon to get a shance
to fix looms in woollen mill lover
looker) then in cotton MILL, I worked
at that job until the summer of 1869,
when I came west again and settled on
the farm OH which l now reside, and in
the reighborhood OF some OF our family.
Having had 20 years experience in the
cotton mill of Lancashire and the cotton
and woollen mills of New England, and
IS years as an American farmer-I and
a son of mine owning and farming $50
acres of land--however big a chump I
was at the start in the nature of things,
ought to know little of something by
this time.
/ offer the above as a kind of creden-
tial for the appearance of this letter in
your columns.
The first mistake your correspondent
makes is a geographical one. Any per-
son may live in Fell River Is years and
know no more about the United States
THAN If he had never left Manchester.
Pit Is the dumping ground of factory
Operatives from England, ETC., to the
New England States, and consequently
workpeople are always more plentiful
and wages lower there than at other
places more remote from the sea-board.
For instance, we run eight looms with
10-year-old helper for dollar week
less than we could earn in some of the
inland towns for running six looms. In
overlookers' wages there was a still
greater difference, for, while they only
received from 8 to 91a dollars a week in
Fall River, we get at other places from
10h to IA dollars and 20 cents-the
latter wages within so miles of Fall
River. The difference in the rate of
wages Is greater still in mechanical and
other skilled labor, varying from 81 a
80 day in the Southern States, $1.25 to 81
in the Eastern and Western, to from
50 to 81 q day on the Pacific slope. Com
mon and farm laborers' wages vary as
much or more, running from 50 a month
South, SO to $14 East, SIG to $22 West
to $24 or $25 on the Pacific slope. 1t
must be remembered that when l talk
of the United States, am talking about
big country. Your readers read OF
the great forest fires in Minnesota. II
= Is only one of A states. They were 200
amiles north of us. We live in Southern
Minnesota. There were drought, cy-
clones. land chinch-bugs in Southern
Minnesota last summer. The cyclones
were 120 miles east of us, the drought
as Tar west; the chinch-bug did a little
damage in this county, but nothing to
speak of. Our county is 80 miles Ions
and 20 miles wide; there are 81 Counties
in the state, all of which will average
as large as this. This may be thought
a funny way to argue the tariff cues.
ton, but when your readers consider
the difference in climate, of the products
of the soil. and the innumerable indus
tries, the producers and manufacturers
all striving to buy cheap and sell dear
It will be seen at once how impossible
1t is to frame any tariff that will come
any way near being equitable and JUS
to all sections of this vast country. TX
illustrate again. Our Fall River frient
thinks it would benefit him to be pro
tected from foreign competition. II i
did, it would injure some one else. Thu
duty on imports is a tax, under any CT
cumstances. It rs high enough to pro
tect any class or branch Of trade, Of