The Grenada sentinel. [volume] (Grenada, Miss.) 1868-1955, 1904-06-04
THE TARIFF is TO BLAME.
Prosperity Boosted Of in Republican
Platforms Is Disproved by
Published Facts.

ACOPIC Will OUldll IuCOlilCS, IdI IL y
clerks and working men, should husband
their resources and savings, for a period
of business depression would seem to be-
impending. The Associated Press sent
out a warning on May 10, which was pub
iished in the evening newspapers of that
date and the morning newspapers of the
next day at the head of the financial
news The report after stating the un-
precedented collapse of the stock mar
ket says:
THE conviction is growing, however
that the LUIS of the s~tagnation in the
temporary factor, and has to do with the
gradual emerging of the conditions OF
general contraction in business and in
dustry in all directions"
Hard times always follow a boom,
and business depression means that the
mar must seek the job and not the job
the man. The reduction in wages that
commenced last fall will surely be more
accentuated as the demand for labor be-
comes less and the railroads and other
great corporations reduce their work.
ing force. Indeed, this reduction has al
ready commenced, for the New York
Central railroad has ordered all its de-
partments to cut down expenses and the
men employed to be reduced to the least
number necessary to carry on the bust
ness of the road. Other railroads will
likewise retrench, and this will cause
stagnation in the labor market, for
when 'the man is seeking the job" he is
compelled to accept what the employer
offers, when he knows that thousands are
after it.
8 This breakdown of prosperity which
the p~rotectionists boast is produced by
the protective tariff, is the outcome that
has been foretold by the democrats.
The goose is slowly dying that laid the
golden eggs, and the few have the gold
and the many will now have to suffer.
But the deception that the republican
leaders have practiced on their follow
ers is still being continued, for on the
same day that the Associated Press sent
out its pessimistic report on the bust
ness outlook, the republican state on
vention of New Jersey in the platform
adopted, declared: That the protec-
tive tariff has brought the greatest pros
perity to capital and labor" Repub-
lican platforms are VIGOROUSLY unreli-
able, and the idle men in the protected
industries, in the silk mills, the wooden
mills, and other factories running on
short time in New Jersey, the so 900
idle men in the textile field in Philadel-
phia alone, are facts that disprove the
reliability Of the New Jersey platform.
besides the general contraction in
business" that the Associated Press an
Prosperity has vanished from so many
Industries, and so many homes are re-
stricting their expenses, that there
must be something wrong with the sys-
tenn that the republicans are boasting of.
The New Jersey platform, however,
told the truth about the prosperity the
tariff has brought to capital, if it had
been frank enough to acknowledge that
capital" meant the trusts. AS long as
the trusts and combines can keep up the
price of what they produce, they will
still have a measure of prosperity, but
with falling wages and men out Of work,
even the trusts will suffer, for the ca
pacity of the people to consume is meas
ured by the amount of money they earn.
In ~curtailing expenses, luxuries and then
clothes are the first items cut off and the
present depressed condition of the tex
ti1A w n rlrnf 4a1Ie ~ ko1A T. 49, ~.---T
of Commerce, May II, the headlines OF
the article on the dry goods trade says:
Buyers Still Cautious. Not Disposed
to Commit Themselves to Liberal Pur-
chases." "a Waiting Period en- All
Lines-General Belief That Were Prices
to Be Announced on Lower Basis Buy
ing Would Be Sufficient to Cause
Speedy Reaction-Many Lines Selling
at or Below Cost To-Day" The same
newspaper on the same day published
a dispatch from Fall River, Mass, which
says: "The plan of running the mills
four days a week which has been tried
for the past five weeks has proved disap-
pointing. Some of the agents at least
strongly favored a reduction in wages,
though it was pretty we'll under
stood that a general strike would follow
such a move. Other manufacturers favor
a shutdown without n reduction. There
is general apprehension over the situa-
A number of other dispatches
in the same issue of the Journal of Com
merce indicate similar conditions at
other places. Resolutions by repub-
lican conventions, that prosperity reigns
supreme, and the protective tariff is the
cause of it is mere bluff, when the facts
that business is depressed and
growing more so.
POINTED PARAGRAPHS.