Rock Island Argus. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1893-1920, 1903-07-18
BOTH CLASSES SUFFER
How Protection to Trusts Robs
Laborers and Farmers.
SIGNIFICANCE OF HIGH PRICES.

Though Wages Have Advanced, the
Increased Cost OF Living Leaves No
Margin For Neutrality-suspicious.
and Wage Workers Are Deeply
Concerned In Tariff Revision.
The trusts are blaming the increased
cost of their products on the working
men, who, they say, are demanding
unreasonably high wages. AS the cost
Of living has increased on an average
about 40 per cent in the last few
years, mostly in consequence OF the
advance in the price of trust produc-
tons, /, 1T is difficult to see why the
workingmen should not get that much
increased wages, but wages have only
been advanced about u per cent.
Wages not having kept pace with the
cost of living and the trusts and COM
bines having refused in many cases to
increase wages, the result has been the
innumerable strikes to force them to
do so. Wages thus being forced high
er will increase the cost of production,
and the trusts will have to again ad-
vance prices, and then labor will be
How far this increase in wages and
the price of trust products may go is
problematical, but it is certain that
those who have a fixed income or
those who cannot force an increase of
wages are great sufferers by the in
creased cost of living, and perhaps a
majority of the people Of the United
States are in this condition. To them
the halcyon days of the trusts mean
a lack of prosperity and a difficulty in
making their income furnish them q
decent living. MONOPOLY, with its in
satiate NAV, is devouring their sub
stance, yet those of them who are Re
publicans still cling to the fetch of
protection that is the main cause of
their suffering. If the tariff On trust
productions was abolished, the fear of
competition would compel the COM
bines to lower the prices of their prod
uctS to prevent the importation of for
eign made goods. Reduction in prices
would enable the workingmen to spend
more money OH luxuries, and business
in many lines would improve. 1t is
preposterous to answer that there
would be an influx Of foreign goods
the trusts are competing with the for
eigners on their own ground and I'M
derselling them. If. as is sometimes
claimed. the exports of trust produc-
tons are sold at loss and are merely
the surplus that cannot be sold at
home, why this anxiety for foreign
markets and the boast of the Repub-
licans that the largely increased eX
ports exhibit our wonderful prosperi-
tyr Business done at q loss cannot
long continue, and to make the home
customer pay increased prices to carry
It on is an imposition upon the Ameri-
can consumer.
The farmers, whose products are not
protected and whose surplus crops
must be sold in the markets of the
world, have just begun to feel the in
creased cost Of what they have to buy.
They find that the good prices for
agricultural products are being offset
and that the margin of profits is de-
creasing. With good crops all over the
world the prosperity of the farmer
would disappear, for the prices of farm
products are entirely established by sup
ply and demand They have no trust or
COIDDiudlIOu W heep up DLlCSS. anu any
attempt to organize for that purpose
would fail because it would not include
even a minority of the farmers. The
price of every bushel of wheat is fixed
by the demand for the surplus after
the people of the United States have
been supplied Bad crops in Europe
mean increased demand for American
wheat, and good crops there force the
prices down. Other agricultural prod
ucts of the United States of which
surplus is raised are governed in value
= In like manner.
Protection to the trusts through the
tariff is therefore q constant menace
to the farmer and worl1ingman alike,
and trust prices are uniform tax up
on their incomes. The trusts must be
made to compete with their products
in the markets of the world, as the
farmer is compelled to do, by remoV-
ing the tariff protection.