The Tupelo journal., 1904-08-26

2Ornta. l 90 not unuerstanQ--l QouDt even
il Uncle Joe Cannon himself can fully un'
derstand-these foolish facts. Some people
have been silly enough to say that the
white man in Central New York need not
fear the competition Of the black man In
Central Mississippi. nor any diminution OF
his wage because of that competition. They
say, forsooth, that the white man In New
York Is a more efficient laborer-qulcker,
steadied and more diligent-than the black
man In Mississippi; that he does more work
in a day, turns out more product In an
hour, works more days In a week, Is idle
fewer weeks In the year, has more self
control, foresight and frugality, and, being
himself, for these reasons, more prosperous,
makes the community In which he lives
more so. These same people are absurd to
add that the highest priced labor is, as .
rule, the cheapest labor and the lowest
priced labor Is, as a rule, the dearest, and
! thai, somehow, 1t has happened in the his.
tory of the world that the home OF low
| priced labor has never been the home OF
highly developed agriculture or prosperous
| industrialism, and that the most prosperous
| and profitable Industrial communities have
always puid the highest daily wages. They
| even go so far as to say-perhaps you, like
me, have, with establishment, heard them
say-that the very reason why certain labor
Is high priced Is because 1t Is efficient, and
therefore a better Investment for capital,
when productivity Is considered, than the
lower priced labor with whose products 1t
comes In competition. OF course, you and
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ter from our Republican friends. We know
that the reason why labor was more high
ly paid even in colonial times In America.
than the same labor, for the same work
was paid In Great Britain must have been
the existence of some sort of protective
legislation, keeping out Of America the pau
per labor, and the products, 81 The pauper
labor of England, Scotland, Wales and Ire
land. 1t Is true that we have not thus
far found the law upon the statute books,
and we are told, by ignorant historians,
that there was none, but, whether that
sort Of legislation has yet been found or
not, it must have existed, because superior
wages and the prosperity of the working
man must be had, and can only be had. by
force of a policy of legislative protection
ism. The lost statute will be found after
| cannot be sustained in any other way, and
the theory, as our Republican friends tell
us, is "our fixed national policy ;" hence to
doubt it would be disloyalty.
A wise man entertains a sovereign con-
tempt for q great many sorts of errors, but
the soyereingnest of all should be visited
on the designing idiot, who says that the
price of labor depends upon the amount
of work to be done in a country and the
number of men capable and DESTROYS of do
ing it in a word, on demand for and sup
ply of labor. That particular sort of pecur
liarly inspired idiot attempts to explain that
the high wages which were paid in Califor-
mia and all the new States for those EN-
DiOftu oh IL III WV hAAS " AOhSot -
| comparison with the wages paid In older
States, which were without free lands and
with comparative abundance of laborers, Is
to be accounted for by this same scarcity
of workingmen and the abundance of new
work in the new States. The same feather
less biped, we canno be too severe on him,
sir, carries his explanation further and tells
you that the superiority of our wage rate
in colonial times and always since then,
over that existing in Great Britain and on
the continent, was due to this same fact,
viz paucity of workingmen and abundance
of work. How lacking in the subtlety of in
%tellect! Instead of seeking out In remote
metaphysical places reasons satisfactory to
q curious mind, he contents himself, like
a brother to the OK with facts that hap
pen to obtrude themselves right in front
of his nose. These be, sir. mere demagogic
appeals to "the basest set in the land-the
farmers" as our fellow citizen in the white
house is reported to have called them. What
is the brother to the OK fit for, anyhow.
save to be taxed for the creation of nat
! urally improbable industries? 1t Is plain,
sir. to me and you and other strenuosities
that an industry, created by taxation and
maintained by legislation, taxing competing
products, must necessarily be more profit
able to the taxpayer and to the consumer
and, therefore, to the commonwealth, than
an Industry which does not require any
legislation to make it profitable in the first
instance, nor any taxation OF consumers to
keep it on it's feet after 1t has been ere
Z Nv tIC DhsC III VI "a hAAhoNS
natural aptitude and other environment.
That reminds me of another blunder of
our ancestors, both under the common law
in Great Britain and in the United States.
They seem to have entertained a notion
that combinations in restraint of trade,
seeking monopoly and throttling competi-
tion. are In some way adverse to the de-
velopment of individuality and somehow
poison the life of trade. They went so far
as to contend that the highest object of
mans existence is not to be well managed,
even at a living money profit to himself.
but that 1t Is to learn to manage himself
well. We know now that combinations Of
corporations, seeking with the power of
monopoly the resultant power of taxing
consumers by raising prices to an extor-
tionate5 figure, under the shelter OF tariff
laws shutting out foreign competitors, and
seeking the further resultant power to bear
down the price to be paid tC the farmer
raising the raw material, and seeking the
yet further resultant power to regulate
wages by reason of the fact that the work
ingman has nowhere else to go to get work
except to the concerns in the combination
are on the whole beneficial institutions In
a free republic of self governing men. They
may appear to be doing some harm, may
appear at first blush indeed to be blocking
that broad opportunity for individual eff
fort, which you enjoyed, sir, when you ad-
vanced in an unfinished lifetime from the
position of a brakeman on a train to that
of a leader of men as a railroad and IN
uuSIlId tdplathE hhu NIL lAh " SNaA
try merchant, become now a merchant
prince, also once enjoyed. These are only
phenomena, however-mere outward seem
ings. Great combinations of industrial cor
porations, seeking mOnopolistic control, we
now know to be industrial evolutions."
necessary to modern development" and it
is blasphemy against Almighty God himself
to contend against this, His law of evolu-
ton. There are those who urge that Fed
eral statutes need not aid the evolution"
but they are plainly mistaken, because, 1t
being once granted that it is Gods law, as
all evolutionary progress must be granted
to be. then the conclusion seems clear, that
it would be both sacrilegious and irreligious
not to assist the evolutionary process-so
wisely and so recently discovered.
Sir, there is hope for the republic as long
as it continues to move forward in the tried
ways of the old world, and to divorcing it
That we are moving and divorcing there Is
no doubt. Standing now in the dawn of the
twentieth century, having forbidden the
reading of the Declaration of Independence
courts ready to decide that the constitu-
tion is not a written letter to be read and
obeyed, but a dancing panorama. changing
itself to suit changing conditions; having
put our foot down, wisely and firmly, upon
freedom of speech and freedom Of assembly
and freedom of the press in Colorado and
in those "appurtenant -appendages," where
freedom of speech, press and assembly might
be awkward for us having discovered that
Gods command against robbery and theft
does not apply to men in the aggregate, act
ing as nationalities, when robbing commu-
mites of their independence, or benevolent
ly assimilating" their resources-amid all
these reversals of the historical blunders
of our past, I boldly aver that we need
not despair of the republic.
True, there are those who say, with
blind fatality, that the Dingley tariff law
| did not always exist, that everyone of it's
schedules is not unchangeably to be wor.