Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1895-08-12
HOW FREE TRADE Has WORKED.

lt almost seems as if, when writing
about fiscal and industrial policies,
democratic, land particularly free trade
journals, find it impossible to tell the
truth straight. Everything that pass
es through their laboratory gets a
twist and comes out crooked. The
Brattleboro Reformer, complaining of
the position of the Press as to the sit
uation in the wooden industry, says:
cit is no longer possible to deny the
fact, just as tariff Performers" pre-
dicted, that the prices are rising"
Now,if the tariff 'sreformers'' predict
ed anything with defniteness and rep
etition, it was that prices would fall
and that poor people would be able
to buy their things cheaper. Thus
was the burden of their appeal to the
masses for votes. Their one great
complaint against the Mckinley bill
was that it made prices high.
If they had frankly told the people
that prices would go up under low
tariff regime Cleveland would never
have been elected. The fraudulent
tinware campaign Immediately after
the passage of the Mckinley bill, in
which peddlers were sent out on sala-
ry among the farmers to put up the
price of pans, cups and cans to double
and sometimes treble what it had pre-
viously been, and the concerted ac-
ton of importers to put up the prices
of dress goods and charge it to the
Mckinley law and SO set the women
to egging on the men to favor Free
Trade, were scheme to make votes
for Cleveland by creating the belief
that the Mckinley tariff had put up
prices and that Free Trade would re-
duce prices.
To pretend now that the reform
ers'' predicted that prices would rise
of integrity. What scores of Protec
tionists said, and, among them the
Press, was that repeal of the duties
would at once put down prices low
enough for foreigners to undersell
American producers and with that put
down American wages; and that when
this had been accomplished and for
eigners had got the monopoly of the
American market, prices would go up
to point as high as, or higher than,
they were under Protection; SO that
through Free Trade we should lose
the industry and, Herewith, the en-
ployment and wages, without perma
nently gaining in lower prices; and
this is exactly what has happened.
The first move was to lower prices
and to slaughter American sheep, and
to close factories, mines and furnaces.
Now that Protection has been sus
pended for nearly two years, wages
mercilessly cut from 20 to 80 per cent.
and the market handed over to for
eigners, prices are rising. 1t is true
that so far as any resumption of en-
ployment is taking place in this
country, a slight movement toward
the restoration Of wages was unavoid-
able; but the wages of this country
have not risen quarter of what they
were cut, while according to glowing
accounts given of the Bradford trade,
prices in England have gone up 80 to
rs per cent. AS proof of the small
ness and hardness in the rise of wages
in the wooden industry, there is now
great strike in the carpet and wool
en- factories of Philadelphia for an in
crease of wages which the manufac-
turers have thus far proved unwilling
to give. The truth is that the cut in
wages was so tremendous that any
resumption of Protection at all made
return of part of it inevitable.
But the attempt to make the public
believe that the increase in wages
puts the laborers where they were
before the election of Cleveland is
scandalous Misrepresentation. 1t is
a lie, and those who assert it know it
is lie.-The Press.