The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1898-02-07
Another Wet Nurse Wanted.

The National Association of Manu-
facturers ask for the. creation of an
other department in the federal gov
eminent to Icok after their interests,
and L bill is being prepared for run
ming what is termed the department
of industry. The ordinary significance
of the term industry is a broad one
and covers all fields of productive
energy; but, by its specialization in
the politics of one of the national par
ties, it has come to have the restricted
sense of energy applied to the manu-
factrre of goods, wares and merchan-
disc. When the protection of our in
dustrics is grandiloquently urged by
perferVid patriots, or when the neces-
= sity of fostering them is argued, or
,heir paralysis by letting-them-stand
alone legislation is bemoaned, the term
is meant to apply only to a small por
ton, some per cent, of all those who
are engaged in gainful occupations.
Blacksmiths, carpenters, maSons,
ministers and editors are not indus
trfalists, are not to be fostered nor
protected. SO this proposed depart
.nent of industry will have for it's spe-
cial function the promotion of the in
dustres of six out Of each hundred of
our population.
Just what need there is of it we con-
TESS inability to appreciate. Not only
are the interests of these particular in
dustrialists we'll cared for now, but
they are nursed with extraordinary
zeal A great national party exists
for no other end than to serve them,
and the nation is thrown into business
spasms every four years lest some
hostile and Indifferent guardian be in
stalled. Wearied with the burden this
nursing imposed, the remaining I'M
classified workers five years ago COM
missiOned one party to remove the
nursing bottle and dismiss the baby
tenders and try the experiment of let
ting the overgrown infant use it's own
legs for lOcomotion. But so great was
the cutlery, so pathetic the lamenta-
tons so vigorous the walls of the in
fants, that the party only diminished
Il trifle the quantity of milk and dis
charged a nurse or two. And there
upon the infants promptly went into
spasns ard were only relieved when
Mckinley and Dingley came to their
assistance with paregoric
But department of industry is
needed, not to get all the comforts of
home for its proteges, for they have
them, but to enable them to get into
that abroad" for which their nurses
have heretofore expressed such a con-
temptuous disregard. AS their present
ead nurse told them at their banquet
last week, they want to extend their
rIarkets, not their notes This extern
sion is to be the especial function of
the proposed department of industry.
But why? Are not all the more i'm
portant economic facts, all that gov
e. nnent can furnish and private inter
ests utilize. already collected and di-
gested by the bureau of labor statis
tics? Have we not now a department
of state? Under it, scattered all over
the civilized, the semi-civilized and
barbaric world, is there not a corps of
several hundred consuls general, con-
suls ordinary and commercial agents ?
Are they not each and every one of
them on the qui vive all the time to
find places in the abroad" where the
infants can dispose of their wares
Does not the department of state. by
its bureau Of foreign commerce, now
publish daily such Of these discoveries
as it deems valuable? Are not the re-
ports of the consuls filed with COM
paints that our manufacturers refuse