The Washington bee., 1897-07-10
PeRFEcTINe PROTECTION.
Two Slight Changes Suggested in the
Interest of Farmers and LabOrers.

Two Slight Changes Suggested in the
Interest of Farmers and LabOrers.
The senate is now engaged in remedy
ing the small imperfections of the Ding
ley bill, which, as all good protection
lists assert, is one of the best tariff bills
ever drafted. 1t distributes it's bless
ings to aIl-farmer, laborer and manu-
facturer. Without doubling the good
intentions of the makers, we wish to
suggest one or two minor details which
might possibly help the bill to fulfill
the expectations of its authors:
First.-Lubin's export bounty scheme
might enable the farmer to get small
slice of the benefits of protection. Of
course the farmer doesn't expect-espe-
ciaIly at frst-to get as much OF the
benefits as the manufacturers have been
getting for 80 years. A protection OF
about 20 per cent.-that is ten cents per
bushel on wheat, five cents on corn, etc.
would satisfy him, while it takes four
times as much to satisfy ordinary tarlH
infants.
This small export duty would not
make good the farmers loss because OF
import duties on manufactured prod
ucts, saying nothing about past losses,
but in course of time, after his industry
had felt the stimulating effects of real
protection what protects the farmer
might muster up courage enough to fol-
low the example of Oliver Twist
which example has grown into a Gus
tom with protected interests-and ask
for more Possibly also he might
form political trusts or combines to de-
mand more" and raise millions of dol
lars to send lobbies to Washington to
bribe congress. While protection is in
order export duties are the farmers
only hope. With them he may hope not
only to change his losses to profits, but
also to regain that power and position
which were once his, but which have
long since passed into the hands of the
manufacturers.
Second.-It is also fitting to recognize
the laborer in the distribution of tariff
profits. Like the farmer, he now puts
his hand into his pocket to help swell
the profits of protection, practically
none of which comes his way. 1t is not
an easy matter to equalize the benefits
of protection so that the workingman
shall get his full share. A prohibitive
duty on imported labor might in the
course of time afford some protection
by restricting the supply of labor, so
that manufacturers could carry out
their good intentions Expressed when
asking for higher duties) and pay
American wages to American work.
ingmen."
At present the condition of working
men in the protected industries is pitia-
BILE in the extreme. The Philadelphia
Ledger, a good republican paper, told
us about May 1 that in the protected
iron and coal industries of Pennsyl-
vania the wage rate has been reduced so
low that it is scarcely sufficient to pro-
vide the necessaries of decent. sanitary
living" 1t says "the lowest classes of
alien cheap labor swarm in the iron and
coal districts of the state" and the
competition for work is so fierce "that
they contend, not against the employ
ers for the highest wages, but among
each other for the lowest?" 'As ap-
pears by the testimony presented to the
legislative committee, they
herd in squalor, subjects of abject pen
ury, and are beset by disease, dirt and
hunger" The Ledger thinks our i'm
migration laws are defective and i'm
provident" and suggests that "to prop
erly protect American workmen con-
gress should pass an immigration as
well as a tariff bill" This is a good
idea and should be acted upon at once.
The only wonder is that some of the
good manufacturers, in their anxiety to
protect and raise the wages of their
workingmen, did not think of this plan
before. Then, if they should have a
law passed which should make it COM
pulsory for them to give at least one
half of their protection and monopoly
profits to their employees, protection
would begin to be an all around bless
ing. The manufacturers might still
be getting the lions share, but they
would not get all.
When these changes are made in the
bill it will undoubtedly be what the
New York Tribune declared it's proto-
type, the Mckinley bill, to be-'the
bravest and best tariff bill ever passed"
Will they be made ?-Byron w. Holt.