Wausau pilot. [volume] (Wausau, Wis.) 1896-1940, 1908-03-31
EDITOR puoT.

writing now much INDUCED in by a
class of writers who have abandoned
thought and accepted protective
tariff as part of the moral order of the
universe, not to be reasoned about. or
questioned.
The editor finds : grain of comfort
in the fact that the panic of 1857, the
least of all our panics, occurred under
low tariff .SbuI conveniently overlooks
the wild cat banking and paper rags for
money, which the republicans made so
much of in the campaign of 1896. The
hard times of 1857 is of little conse-
quence as an argument for protective
tariffs, being soon over with and caused
chiefly by worthless currency. The
great panics in our history, those of
1873, 1893 and 1907. occurred under ex-
cessively high tariffs, but in all of these
rs well, a defective currency and reck-
i-as banking played an important part.
The lessons To be learned are the futility
of high tariffs to prevent panics and
the necessity of sound CURRENCY and
safe banking.
The Record Herald dnreservedly and
fully accepts the justice of a revenue
system which exempts all property
from taxation and lays the burden of
supporting the government chiefly up
on The necessities of life. 1t has no
word of complaint against exempting
the property of billion dollar trusts
from all taxation. 1t sees no wrong or
injustice in the production of billion
aires in republic. 1t has become so
common to figure wealth in billions
that no one reflects that he cannot
grasp billion in thought. Let us try
to imagine billion silver dollars laid
rim to rim in one thousand parallel
lines. One thousand persons, giving
their entire lives industriously to the
task, could not pick up those dollars
one By one and place them in chests or
vaults at one end of the lines. Does
any sane man imagine that any human
being can, in any just and honest I'M
dertaking, earn billion dollars in the
three score and ten years allotted him?
If man could actually earn fifty thou
sand dollars year, it would take him
twenty thousand years TO earn billion
dollars. 1t is simply by reason of the
injustice of our system of
taxation that any man is able to ac-
cumuiate any approach to such sum-
In contrast with our small but grow
ing class of millionaires we have mil
lions of hungry, half-clad, emaciated
poor, robbed of the common necessaries
of life by the Unsuitable greed of the
tariff begotten and favored rich. In
the offices and shops of the great cor
porations, in the department stores,
women working for wages too small to
afford ordinary comforts, have gone to
their employers and asked for living
wages, only to be told that if they
could not live on what they are receiv-
ing, to get some gentleman friend to
help them,-in other words to barter
virtue for food, clothing and shelter.
In the large cities are whole blocks of
buildings occupied by prostitutes who
have dropped from factories, depart
ment stores and sweatshops because
they could not get a living wage, and
have been heartlessly told to provide
for their necessities by a life of shame.
Think of girls nine and ten years old
working in the cotton mills twelve
hours per day or night. with never an
opportunity to sit down. Thiak of
woman making shirts at four to seven
cents; pants at fifteen, twenty, thirty
seven cents, coats at fifty cents. These
are figures taken from the report of
the Massachusetts Bureau of Labor,
1870, referring to Boston. 1t says of
the 20 600 women in and about Boston
who live by sewing, the average wages
do not exceed $2.75 per week. Women
and children half clad, half starved and
living in novels work long hours in the
mines of the tariff protected barons for
the merest pittance.
70 produce such conditions the pro-
tected interests have contributed vast
sums of money and coerced their work
men to carry presidential and congress
sional elections. After the election of
1888 and the passage of the Mckinley
tariff bill, Senator Lay of Pennsylvania,
chairman of the republican national
committee, made the proud boast, 1--WE
told the manufacturers that if they
would give us the money to carry the
election we would let them make their
own tariff bill, and we did it," The
contributions to the republican cam
paign fund of 1900 have been variously
estimated at from sixteen to eighteen
million dollars. After campaign in
which money was poured out like
water they had balance in their treas
ury of one millioa eight hundred thou
sand dollars. The appeal of the nation
al republican committee to the great
corporate interests in behalf of the
election of Theodore Roosevelt in 1904
said, mot one dollar of your money
will be thrown away. 1t will be your
bread thrown upon the waters, which
shall bring you, not only good returns,
but you shall have four years more of
prosperity, because you will be pro-
tected."
They received their protection in the
highest and worst tariff law ever passed
but their prosperity seems at last to
have been frost bitten or suffered
.~kA YOxx do ho ri Ine Is
unemployed and hungry folk not in
the Brokaw paper mill hands please
make reply? The paper could all be
sold now at remunerative prices but
the manufacturers are afraid that if they
permit slump in present prices they
may never be able to screw them up to
that notch again, hence the closing
down.
OF course no recital of the injustice
and outrage of the tariff system cen in
any wise affect the policy of the Record
Herald or appeal to the intelligence of
the editor, but some light may penetrate
the beclouded minds of some who read
his illusions. When they come to APP
preciate no W the system mas corrupted
and debaached the voters, given the
government over into the hands of its
worst citizens.-the Quays, Platts, De-
pews and Aldriches,-bu up all
powerful corporations, robbed the
laboring man and the farmer, produced
endless suffering and shame, suppressed
discussion and poisoned the sources of
information, hushed the voice of the
church and palsied every means of
effective opposition to its absolute
sway, they may begin to bestir them
selves to find remedy and strive for
the bitterment of conditions.
OBSERVER