The times. (Owosso, Mich.) 1882-1897, 1896-10-09
WORKS ARE CLOSING.
8ERIOUS EFFECT OF THE FREE SILL
YER MOVEMENT.

Many Manufactures, Suspend Until They
Know the Result of the Eiection--No
Desire to Sell Products and Receive Pay
ment In Fifty-Cent Dollars.
The threat of free silver and de-
based currency is having serious eff
feet upon the industrial interests of
the country. Many manufacturers are
closing their works until after cleo
ton solely for the reason that they
cannot afford to manufacture their
wares and sell them on long time on
the basis of 100-cent dollars and take
their chances of being forced to accept
payment in 50-cent dollars. 1t would
simply be ruin to them to do so and no
sane man can blame them for taking
every possible precaution against this
threatened danger.
Many manufacturers are thus COM
PEELED to close their works to save
themselves from certain disaster in
case the Bryan ticket should be eleced.
Others, yet running, are seriously Grip
pied and embarrassed by the threat
hanging over them. AS an illustration
of the damaging effect of the free sill
yer movement the case of the Mime
apolis Threshing Machine company is
mentioned. Under the threat Of going
from a 100-cent dollar standard to a
50-cent dollar standard, this company,
like hundreds of others, has been seri-
ously embarrassed. Still it struggled
on, doing it's best to keep it's works go
ing and its men employed. Then when
1t became necessary on a payday to
issue time checks to tide 1t over until
1t could make cash collections or raise
the money to pay its workmen, the
free silver organs, after having done
all they could to embarrass the firm,
pitched into it with the savagery OF
Indian scalpers and sought to make
political capital out Of the company's
cramped condition. Notwithstanding
the fact, the proof of which is abun-
dant, that this company has done its
utmost to keep it's works running and
its workmen steadily employed, these
graveyard ghouls of free silverism
have followed it relentlessly and malic-
iously in order to array the employees
against their employers.
This is one illustration. There are
scores of similar or equally serious
cases. The manufacturers who are
struggling along under the threat OF
free silver and the uncertainty of the
outcome, deserve the sympathy of
their workmen whose interests are
also involved in this issue. Closed
mills and factories mean unemployed
labor.
In this connection we are advised
that all three of Michigan's thresher
factories-two at Battle Creek and one
at Port Huron-have been closed for
some time and will remain closed until
after election for purely business rea-
sons. Very largely the product of
hese factories Is sold on three years
time-one-third due in the fall of each
year following the summer in which
deliveries are made. The manufactur-
ers dare not go on making long time
sales until assured that honest 100
cent dollars are to be our money of
the future, as they have been in the
past and are now. If Mckinley and
Hobart are elected, that will be all
the assurances they ask and they will
resume business with confidence in the
future. This is all they are waiting
fer. And McKinley's election will
mean just as much to the men who are
employed in these industries as to the
owners of them. 1t will mean plenty
of work and good wages. The interests
of the employer and the employe are
identical and he Is an enemy of both
who seeks to make war between them.
Detroit Journal