Los Angeles herald., 1909-12-27
OUR HEAVIEST BURDEN

wiped out the high tariffs We're con-
tinued on the plea that American in
dustries needed stimulation and protec-
ton When ulti-milllonaires had
been created by the high tariff and
had organized the combinations known
as trusts the excuse for high tariff
was the laboring men needed protec-
tion in order that they might receive
good wages.
This plea has been worked before
the public and has been worked in
congress and has been worked in the
newspapers, or perhaps we might say
it has worked the public, worked con-
gress and worked the newspapers.
Now it is about to work the working
man, who will have to pay so much
for clothing and other necessaries Of
life that he will perhaps learn AT
LAST the fallacy of protection" the
stock high-tariff argument.
The more the protection fallacy is
inquired into the more apparent does
it appear that the only interests
which are protected by tariff sched-
ules are utterly selfish interests, and
that the tariff is merely a method of
money making for such interests.
Many protectionists own factories or
interests in factories both in the
United States and In Europe. In the
United states they want protection
against the pauper labor of Germany
and France. and in Germany and
France they want protection against
the skilled labor of America.
In every country in which they are
protected these predatory interna-
tional interests Chat are no more
American in America than they are
German in Germany-they are ledger
PATRIOTS form trusts to enable them
the better to distribute their pro lucts
for prices they would never be able to
get under conditions Of free competi-
tion.
The steel trust has perhaps been
written about more frequently than
any other, partly because it produced
! Andrew Carnegie at one end of the
line and Harry Thaw at the other,
with a long list of gentlemen with
varicolored careers in between, and
partly because it's industrial record
has been marked by fierce labor wars.
To reconcile the conduct of Mr.. Car
negie, his public addresses, his gifts,
with the shootings, riotings, murders.
l.. &
rible accidents resulting from care
| lessness, and the other horrors which
make his wealth-producing iron and
steel foundrles gehenna-like. is q
task that may well bewilder the Re-
cording Angel when Andrew IS called
to account, so we won't attempt it.
one would have thought the steel
industry would at least have been
built up by American labor. But for
laboring men to make his money and
to be burned up in his furnaces An
drew did not go to the United States
He would not have been able to dodge
out of paying an American working
man a reasonable wage. He did not
even go to his native Scotland. He
was too canny for that He knew if
Scotland learned the truth his repu-
tation as a -philanthropist and
a benevolent laird would be gone for
ever.
So he and MS associates built up the
steel industry with laborers imported
from the continent Of Europe-miser-
able creatures who can't talk English
and won't learn (and are not encour-
aged to learn-at least not by the
steel trust, who work seven days a
week and don't know when Sunday
comes, and are so stupid they are in
different to risk and take it for granted
the violent death of few of them now
and then is all in a days work
The history Of the steel trust alone
should be enough to give the American
people such a thorough disgust at the
high tariff system that they would
loathe the very sound of the false,
misleading, mischievous, double-deal-
ing, iniquitous, word protection"
The American people will yet de-
mand tariff reform, and the reform
will be sweeping.
They will at last come to their senses
and fix the schedules as old Golden
fixed the schedules in England when
the increase of the price of bread to a
half dollar a loaf suddenly brought
the people to a never-forgotten real
ization Of the kind Of protection" eX-
tended by a protective tariff and the
kind of people it protected; and the
tariff, excepting for necessary revenue
and for helping the government pay
its bills, was swept out of existence.
SO gigantic was the increase in
commerce in the island of Britain
after the abolition of veXatious tariff
schedules, which acted as restraints
on trade, that it's shipyards could not
build enough ships to carry the
freight resulting from trade expansion.
No sensible man can doubt that if
similar policies were adopted in the
United states this country would be-
come the foremost maritime power in
the world, business activity would be
stimulated along with maritime ac-
tivity, and all the big booms America
has enjoyed would be forgotten in the
overwhelming success of the mari
time boom, and the general prosperity
it brought to this great agricultural,
manufacturing, industrial, importing