Las Vegas daily optic. [volume] (Las Vegas, N.M.) 1880-1908, 1896-03-31
PULSE.
Free Coinage and Protection Com
ing to the Front, Hand in
Hand.

To the Editor of the Optic.
PHILADELPHIA, Pa, March 25th.-
As you notice by the press dispatches,
the manufacturers here have been max.
ing an effort TO help the cause Of sill
yer. They do not pretend to claim
that this is done from ph~ilanthropic
motives, hut as a matter of business,
feeling that in this way they r help.
Ing themselves.
Having an extensive acquaintance
with many of them, in years past, ]
know them to be protectionists of 9
pronounced type, even, some of them,
IN favor Of a tariff wall high enough to
be prohibitory. But they have sud-
denly discovered that no tariff wall can
be bailt high enough to keep out the
Japs and Chinese.
James Dobson illustrates it by show
ing a rug that he has been selling for
so so made from free foreign wool,
which tine Japanese are selling here for
fifty cents. What kind of tariff will
keep these fellows outP
Some of the wool commission men
here have been flooding the country
with arguments, for years, in favor of
wool tariff, by sending out weekly and
monthly circulars to their customers,
putting in, whenever opportunity Of
fered, good, strong ar
gument for q tariff on
wool. This has been non-partisan, for
it is well known that Samuel j. Ram
dali, for instance, a democrat, was one
of the staunchest protectionists in the
country, and many Of the wool grow
ers in Pennsylvania, Ohio and in the
two Virginlas are democrats-in favor
of tariff.
But for the past, twenty years wool
has been going down, down; yet we
have had tariff on wool, nearly all the
time. The Ohio, Pennsylvania and
West Virginia wool, the finest in the
world, has gone down in the past
twenty years from fifty cents to fifteen
cents a pound, and New Mexico wool,
although constantly improving in
quality, from twenty cents TO five cents.
May be there is some other cause for
these falling Of prices!
Any one. whose attention has been
called to the money question and who
has given it the least unbiased study, |
can easily divine the cause. The
silver producer, naturally, has studied
the subject, which should be so plain
that he who runs could read, If he were
not blinded by his own self interest.
The wool growers and those who
handle their product have run up
a stone wall, and naturally
look around and find the entire coun.
try, seemingly, trying to look through
The same stone wall, seeing nothing
but falling prices.
They have discovered that the silver
'scranks" have a hole through which
hey can see daylight breaking, and
hat those who are engaged in calling
hem 'scranks'' are the very men who
ire interested in keeping up this stone
wall. But the opening the silver men
made is letting in a food Of light,
Ill over the country, within the past
years-or weeks, 1t may be said.
This should encourage the friends of
in the west, finding this strong
in the east, and it Is
when we hear OF a conven-
ion like that in New Mexico, the other
passing resolutions making no
mention Of silver. This is used by
standard men here as an
violence that the silver sentiment is
lying out, ven in the silver-producing
Other reasons are given for the pass
'ge Of such resolutions, n Of which
8 that New Mexico desires to keep
luiet on silver, thinking in this way to
'dvance her interests as to statehood.
again 1t 10 said that the convention
vas controlled by scheming politicians
md wool men, who were looking more