The herald., 1897-03-23
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! LABOR VS.. thrift
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BY ABBOT KINNEY


on one ground only: This Is the asser-
ton that the cost of the finished product
is governed by the wage paid to the In
| dividual laborer
The maxim OF protection Is that the
| lower the Individual wage the less is the
cost of the finished product. From an
industrial point of view the ideal laborer
of the protectionist is the slave. The
| slave receives no wages. Consequently.
| under the protective doctrine the slave
must be the cheapest producer. Upon
| this assertion the voter is asked to pro-
| tect the American free laborer against
| the laborer with pauper wages or the
| slave without any wages at all.
| The protection asked for consists in
such tariff as will increase the
! cost of the product of the pau
/ per or the slave when imported
to this country, or preferably that will
prevent the importation of such goods
! altogether
The persons who, under the protective
policy. determined the amount and
character of the protection required are
| the largest manufacturers, the sugar
| trust, the great coal mine combines and
those like tn IN.
These, by their agents in Washing
! ton, present their views to congress.
The strongest interests obtain the
heaviest protection. Minor interests.
such, for instance, as New York bar
| ley or our oranges, are either given q
| bounty or tariff or promised something
| for complacently consenting to what the
| powerful men want.
The employers are those who lobby
| for bounties ard tariffs. The bounties
and tariffs are always paid to them or
| collected by them. Never by the la
| borers. The laborers have never in
itiated a demand for a bounty or
| tariff.
There has never been an exami-
nation of any of the ff-get-
| ting industries to ascertain what
| the difference in labor cost justi-
fed giving them, or whether there
was any unfavorable difference at all,
nor whether the laborers derived any
| benefit. The assertion of the beneficial
ries has been the only detail furnished
to the bounty giving congresses.
The strangest thing in this economic
folly is that the industries that directly
handle the delegated tariff taxes or re-
ceive the protective bounties and those
other industries most closely allied to
them-that is to say those industries
that arc supported or claimed to be sup
ported by the public taxing power for
the sake Of their laborers wages are
the ones where the laborer has the
hardest lot. 1t is in these industries
like the Rockefeller coal mines, the Car
ItSlc Stctl anu PAdtC hiiiiSr CIV,
that the great labor revoits and result
ing disorders have taken place. These
protected people and the railroads mo-
nopolixe our serious American labor
troubles
Even a stranger thing is the fact that
it is the protected employers who have
run Americans out of their works and
deliberately brought in the very pauper
laborers they had baited their congress
sonal hooks with to get their bounties
against.
The gross insincerity of such methods,
to say nothing of their inhumanity, is
surprising when considered with the
political strength protection shows
The doctrine that the cheap man is in
dustrially the best man is very i'm
portant one. If we accept this doctrine,
the whole foundation of civilization
rests on shifting sand. Every
high grade nation is industrial
ly at the mercy of the barbarian
and the slave driver. If the cheap man
| is best, Mexico would be a greater per
capita producer than the United States.
and Hindustan than Europe. China
should be the produce-price dictator in
stead of England, and slave-holding
Arabia should be the manufacturing
center of the world. Besides these ma
tional points the protective doctrine
that a cheap man is a cheap producer
strikes a deadly blow at the hopes and
heart sympathies of humanity.
We know in nature that progress to
higher organization and grander
achievement is and has been by the sur
vival of the fittest. Assuming that
such will be the future course of human
movement, we find ourselves confront
ed with the protective dogma that the
pauper and the slave are industrially
the superiors of high-grade, intelligent
men, with achieved capacity and char
acter These two qualities cannot be
had in men long ground down to the low
est point of subsistence. So that high
grade men of capacity and character
must be paid a wage far in excess of the
pauper. Without the pay requisite to
maintain these qualities they will dis
appear. If, then, it is the pauper and
slave who can produce cheapest it is
clear that nation must become pauper
and slave in its labor to industrially sur
vive or exterminate by force all pau
per and slave labor countries.
Yet a tariff-no matter how prohibi-
tive-cannot evade the deadly contest
industrially in our own domestic affairs
The lowest wage payer to the individual
will be the industrial conqueror. The
nation must get down to its marrow
bones.
The extremely serious character, not
only national but humanitarian, of
this cheap protective dogma commands
our attention. 1t is fatal to national
peace, fatal to domestic peace and fatal
to the possibility of relation of mutual
advantage between employer and en-
ployed. 1t is the death of progress in
the masses. 1t is fatal to humanity.
Can such doctrine be true? Can il
be possible that the true and
broad interest of the employer is to grind
dc wn the individual wage of his worker,
and then grind down again, and then
seek the lahorer of the lowest human
standards, and to pay the lowest hu-
man wages? Is it possible that the true
industrial type for final conquest is the
African Arab, with his slaves?
Every hope for the betterment of
humanity denies that serfs, paupers or
slaves are more efficient men in any line
whatever than intelligent freemen.
The Democrat and free trader denies
such a deadly doctrine. He denies it as
a humanitarian, he denies it as moral
ist
The doctrine of protection is not econ
omic, it is not moral, it is not true. Pro-
lection Isl folly and a falsehood. The
facts of the economic history of the
world demonstrate the absolute untruth
of the doctrine that the cheap man is
the cheap producer
We do not have to go to the past or
wade out into the river of old records for
proof. Any time, place or country gives
US proof Cheap-man countries of to-
day can be compared with high-wage
Fr1r