The Lake County times. [volume] (Hammond, Ind.) 1906-1933, 1908-10-27
THE TARIFFS RELATION
TO TRUSTS AND WAGES.
. . . . o . D = y . Z
BY JOHN ID. GLOVER.


It is easily understood by any one who
cares to study it.
The chief objects of protective tariff |
are to preserve the home market to our
manufacturers and producers, and to /
maintain a higher rate of wages for
our workmen. For after all. the wage
question is the most important one in
this campaign. 1t is the very founda-
ton OF all that makes for the home
and for human happiness. Wages are
the standard of civilization. and the
party that advocates a policy that
would reduce the income of those who
work is an enemy to society 1t is as
bad as the pickpocket who relieves you
of your purse. 1t would lessen the
comforts of home and destroy the hap
piness of women and children.
Now the policy of the Democratic
party in regard to the tariff means that
very thing. 1t can not be otherwise.
Let us see. The policy of Mr. Bryan
and his party is to utterly destroy all
protection against the cheap labor,
cheap capital and cheap capital and
| cheap rents of the old world.
This means that wages in this coun-
| try must be reduced to the level of
wages in European countries, or else
our great manufacturing establish
| ments must close. This is the only al
ternative-work for lower wages, or
no work at all.
| Can any workman be fooled by the
speeious and parrot-like cry of our
| free-trade friends who shout 1.-The
| tariff is tax and the consumer pays
| it," or protection is robbery" or the
| capitalist pockets all the profits?
Does Mr.. Bryan think our workmen are
| fools? 1t would seem so. He proposes
| to raise the wages of men who work
| by reducing the price of articles which
| they make. The workmen who can not
see through that foolish fallacy will
probably vote for Bryan and his free
trade policy, if he should be able to
find his way to the polls.
II so, he votes to cut down his own
wages. Mr.. Bryan's plan is to put the
tariff on a strictly revenue basis, so
that importations may be greatly in
creased. For without that increase the
needed revenue cannot be raised. For
example, il duties are reduced one
half, then importations must be doub-
led in order to get the same amount of
revenue that we now collect under our
present tariff. That means that one
half of our workmen will lose their
jobs and the other half will be COM
PEELED to work at reduced wages.
You cannot eat your cake and have
it any more than we can buy things
in Europe and pay our own workmen
for the making. Our democratic friends
profess to be great "sticklers' for the
exclusion of cheap laborers and then
clamor for the products of cheap labor
They want to keep out the cheap man
but let in freely the things that he
makes. That is just about as consist
ent as anything a democratic politician
can offer. What they lack is gump-
tion"-plain common sense.
! And does the farmer want this Bryan
: policy any more than the man who
} works in the shop? Does he want to
buy his supplies in the old country and
send his cabbage, and potatoes, and
, turnips, and eggs, and fruit 1000 miles
to pay for them?
Now if the farmer cannot send his
"perishable products to Europe, tc
whom will he sell them? He cannot
sell them at home because his best
customers have been put out of bus
mess by closing their factories or ccut.
ting their wages one-half. The farmer
wants the factory by his farm or neal
by as possible He don't want to buy
2 his supplies in Europe; he wants tt
!. buy them from his neighbor and pay
for them with his own farm products
] 1t is not one business TO assist tn.
laborers of the old world at the cos
of our own. Our motto should be: "Oul
T own country, our own people, and ou
own flag"
But the cry of the tariff reformer il
that protection is the mother of tn,
trusts"
This is a fallacy pure and simple
> In submitting the proof I propose t,
meet the reformer on his own ground
. | The democratic theory is now, and al
ways has been that whenever the tariff
is increased that increase is immediate
: | ly added to the price of the article an,
the consumer pays it. This is not true
but it is the democratic contention al
the same and for the purposes of thi
| argument l will concede it for a mo
t ment
:. The Mckinley bill, according to MI
Springer, the leading democrat in tn
d house of representatives at that time
: increased the tariff about 25 per cent
That % per cent, according to TIL
5. democratic theory. Immediately at
= tached to the price of articles and tn
poor consumer was compelled to pa
o it. OF course that was not true, bu
: that is not the point I am trying t
: make.
Il l want to make it plain, that, accord
ing to the free trade theory, the McI<in
ley law could not possibly have give
l. aid to any trust. that may have bee
= formed after the passage of that &C
g. hope my trust busting" friends wi
follow the argument
l. If a number of manufacturers shoul
It conclude to form trust and increas
it prices, could they by any means use tn
tariff as a lever with which to rails
them? Most certainly not, and fro1
g the simple and self-evident fact (ac
m cording to the democratic theory tha
:, the % per cent had already been ad
ded. Now if that be true. how, in tn
If name of reason, could that power b
\ used a second time to elevate price
10 That would be utterly impossible. Yo
might as well say that, after the Ion
6 end of a level has touched the groun'
you can lift the object higher by addin