Iron County register. [volume] (Ironton, Iron County, Mo.) 1867-1965, 1895-07-11
THE DOCTRINE OF PROTECTION.


It Ii Based Entirely ON Misunderstanding
of Human Necessities.
The imports of wool and wooiens for
the first three months of this year ex-
coed in value those for the first three
months of 1893 some five million dol
lars. This fact demonstrates, In the
opinion of our contemporary, the
Pioneer Press, and of those more ultra,
thick-and-thin protectionist papers in
whose trail it YEARLY and perfume
torily follows, that the tariff act, with
its free wool and reduction Of fifty
per cent in the tax on woolens, has
American operatives. It is not stated
that these woolens came to us as a
free gift from their foreign makers.
nor were our people who bought
them ''hoodooed" into buying them.
They came because there was a
demand for them; because they were
either of quality the domestic
mills could not produce-in which
case they deprived no one of work-or
because they were to be had cheaper
than similar homemade goods could
be bought for. Either of these causes
is natural and rightful one. If the
kind and qualities imported are not
produced here, then the policy our con-
temporary advocates requires that
there should be no tax on them, and
the tax was an unjust as well as use
less burden. If they came because
they were cheaper, then the ''misun-
Outstanding" of our neighbor and its
kind is as to the simplest of human
rights. It's position involves the neces-
sity of maintaining that consumers of
woolens should be obliged to pay more
for them than they are worth in order
that American operatives can be en-
ployed in making them. The logic of
this is policy of entire exclusion; but
the effect on the American consumers
and the republican party of Mr.. Nc
Kinley's stride in that direction will
discourage further movements on that
line.
But the misunderstanding" goes
much further. It is quarrel with
economic tendencies that. in other
results, our contemporary and the
most ultra of its kind regard as of the
highest benefit and the greatest good.
These tendencies everywhere are to-
wards diminished cost of production
resulting in a widened circle of con-
sumption or use. If it is an evil to be
guarded against and prevented, to
have our woolens obtaina BILE at a less
cost, then it is a greater evil to invent
and use the machinery that has dis
placed the spinning wheel and the
hand looms that formerly made the
3 h ic
race who invented the application of
electricity as an illuminant and as a
motive power; as, farther back, he was
an enemy who discovered that the
black oil that oozed from the rocks
amid the mountains of Pennsylvania
could be refined into an oil that gave a
better and cheaper light than did
the tallow candles it took the place of.
The whole doctrine of protection de-
mands, in its support and advocacy. a
negation of the beneficial consequences
to humanity of these manifold inven-
rions that have cheapened the cost of
living. increased the purchasing power
of wages, and brought to the humblest
home comforts once unattainable
making the Injuries of the last genera
ton the necessaries of this. The print
ing press of to-day. the type-setting
machines, the engines driven by steam,
the implements of husbandry, all these
creations of inventive genius that are
doing the work that millions of men
and women would De required to do,
are sad misunderstanding" of human
wants and needs, decreasing the work
of American operatives" and. from the
sincere protectionist's view, impedi-
ments to industry that should be sum-
narily abolished.-St. Paul Globe.