Montour American. (Danville, Pa.) 1866-1920, 1902-10-09
A WORD TO WORKERS
Benefcient Results of the Republi-
can Policy of Protection.
VOTE FOR PATTIsoN DANGEROUS

1t Encourages Tarit-Smashers-Euro'
pean Labor Is Underpaid, While
American Labor Fares WeIl-What
Distinguished Financier Says
About the Conditions In Europe and
Here.
Pennsylvania voters who contem-
Pattison, Democrat, should pause n
moment before they decide on such a
momentous slip. A vote for Pattison
is a vote of lack of confidence in Re-
publicanism. 1t strengthens the hands
of the Democrats who seek to tear
down our tariff policy, and ruin our
present prosperity.
Particularly should the voter who
has to depend on the toll of his hands
for daily bread halt before he makes
this mistake.
THE WAGES OF EUROPE.
Mr.. James R. Keene the well-known
financier, who has just returned from
an extended visit to Europe, says the
condition of the laboring classes in
Hungary, Austria and part of Germany
is really pitiful. The rate of wages
barely admits of existence, and when
he saw the workmen in those countries
he wondered what we would do with
out a tariff. America is the paradise
of EARTH" declared Mr.. Keene. Here
is the greatest return offered to the
man who has muscle and brain to mar
ket Here is the place for the man of
ambition to discover that energy and
worth find their way to the top more
suddenly than anywhere else on eartn.'
This statement of man of large and
careful observation should command
the attention of American workingmen.
The more intelligent of them of course
know that labor is better rewarded in
the United States than in any other
country. They know that the wage
worker has greater respect here than
in any other land. But do they gener-
ally appreciate why this is so? Forty
five years ago labor in this country was
in about the condition that labor is
now in most of the countries of Europe.
THE CAUSE OF HARD TIMES.
1t was not steady employed and it
was poorly paid. In 1855 Horace
Greeley wrote: The cry of hard times
reaches us from every part of the coun-
try The making of roads is stopped,
factories are closed and houses and
ships are no longer being built. Fac
tory hands, roadmakers, carpenters,
bricklayers and laborers are idle, and
paralysis is rapidly embracing every
pursuit in the country. the cause of
all this stoppage of circulation is to be
found in the steady outflow of gold 10
pay foreign laborers for the cloth the
shoes, the iron and other things that
could be produced by American labor,
but which cannot be produced under
our present revenue system"
TARIFF FOR REVENUE ONLY.
Then the country had a Tariff for
revenue only" which not only failed
to yield sufficient revenue to meet the
expenditures of the government, but
kept the industries prostrated. In his
message to congress in 1857 President
Buchanan thus presented the situa-
ton: with unsurpassed plenty in all
the productions and all the elements Of
natural wealth our manufacturers have
suspended, our public works are re-
tarded, our private enterprises of diff
ferent kinds are abandoned, and thou
sands of useful laborers are thrown out
of employment and reduced to want.
We have possessed all these elements
of material wealth in rich abundance,
and yet Notwithstanding all these ad-
vantages, our country, in it's monetary
interests, is in a deplorable condition"
One of the severest panics the country
ever experienced was in 1857 and it was
particularly disastrous to labor There
were bread riots in New York and some
other cities and destitution and suffer
ing among the laboring classes was
general.
A change came with the Inauguration
of the economic policy of the Republi-
party anu IL 10 nttultSS III DOlHl
out what has been accomplished under
the operation of that policy for Ameri
can industries and American labor.
All intelligent men are familiar with it
and it is this which the wage workers
need to bear in mind when they are ap-
pealed to to strike down or seriously
impair that policy. Labor conditions
in the United States may not be in all
cases what could be desired. Improve
ment in some respects is to be wished
for But on the whole American labor
is vastly better off in every way than
is labor in any other part Of the world
and this is one of the beneficent results
of the policy which has made the
United States first among the indus
trial nations.