Iron County register. [volume] (Ironton, Iron County, Mo.) 1867-1965, 1898-02-10
M'KINLEY AND pINcLN.
False Claims of the Protection Pres
tdent.

ident.
President McKinley's address at the
banquet in New York of the National
Association of Manufacturers was even
more beggarly in tone and incon-
sisteDt in declaration than was Secre-
tary Cages speech at Philadelphia
earlier in the week
The secretary of the treasury insult
ed the intelligence of the American peo-
pie by an attempt to reconcile to BIZ
metallism his currency reform scheme,
the title of which is ''to commit the
country more thoroughly to the gold
standard and remove, as far as possible.
doubts and fears on that point" BY
following a similar line of argument in
his New York speech President Nc
Kinley has added to the Gage insult.
The president, with the unctuous
manner often assumed by advocates of
a weak cause, tried to make black APP
pear white. He congratulated the man
ufacturers upon the prospect of extend
ing, mot their notes, but their bust
ness" When first he addressed them,
he said, they were trying to regain
what they had lost the previous year.
He intended this to mean that they had
suffered actual loss of trade territory
by the operations of the Wilson tariff
law and had not only already regained
all that was thus lost, but had really
extended that territory by the opera
tions of the Dingley law.
There is such a wide divergence in
the presidents professed view of this
effect of the law and of the expressed
opinion made 10y its author on the
floor of the house at Washington few
days ago as to leave no common
ground for these two great apostles of
protection to stand upon. Mr.. Dingley
confessed that protection could never
be effective as long as there were no
uniform restrictions upon the hours of
labor in this country. In other words,
protection narrOws the market to the
home consumer. and the only way in
which production can be made profit
able under such a system is to restrict
it, by act of legislation, within the de-
fined limits of consumption.
President Mckinley told the National
Association of Manufacturers that they
"are now to go out and possess what
you have never had before"-meaning
thereby that the Dingley law was
opening new, broader and more profit
able markets for them.
The Dingley plea for a constitutional
amendment to restrict and equalize
hours of labor, in order to limit pro-
duction as the only means by which
protection will ever be effective, eX-
poses the fallacy of the presidents the
Dry. The strike of New England cot
ton spinners because of a heavy reduc-
tion in their wages caused by overpro-
duction is a fiat denial, in the most
positive and practical manner, of the
presidents claim that the Dingley law
has widened the market for American
manufacturers.
However, most of the men who
listened to the presidents speech were
aware that his claims were false, for
they are men whose judgment ulti-
mately is influenced only by the most
practical test-results. With possibly
very few exceptions, not a manufac-
turer who heard the presidents lame
defense of Dingleyism has experienced
any benefit from that policy except as
IL fosters trusts and limits production.
St. Louis Republic.