Los Angeles herald., 1909-10-01
RESULTS OF TARIFF

course logic is almost synonymous
Il with law. Automatically, two and
n two always add up to four. Chemically
and physically. every action has its
equal and consequent reaction. Philo-
sophically, similar causes produce sim
liar effects, and this is a law that
governs human society.
Therefore. unless there should be a
| change for the better, it is only toe
cas-. to realize conditions which exist
in the United States and were ex-
posed pitilessly by the Pittsburg Survey
must have a sequel in exact accordance
with their own nature.
If circumstances are essentially
good, they will lead on to good. If
essentially bad, how can even the most
sanguine optimist expect, by some
miraculous intervention of Providence
to suspend it's own rules, good as the
result of bad? By their fruits We shall
know them. We offer no apology for
bringing up from time to time the sub
ject of social conditions in the United
States in their relations to the ideal
circumstances which the founders of
the country sought to produce by
establishing a code of social honor and
justice.
An eastern writer, commenting on
the famous Survey" chides the Ameri-
can people for clinging to the old
fashioned Republican illusion "the
pauper labor of Europe" contrasted
with the prosperous, well fed labor of
the United States. He quotes wit
ness at the tariff hearings. This man
typical Republican prosperity
shouter-was asked:
''Do you not think that if the tariff
is laid in the name of labor, labor
ought to get the TARIFF"
He replied: III you will pardon me
for expressing one little thought, will
say that 1 walked down this morning
from the Willard and saw a pair of
horses, a beautiful cart, all equipped
with fruit, vegetables and one thing
and another. I can close my eyes
and see that condition over on
the continent of Europe, with bare
foote, women in rags, with a few
Newfoundland dogs or some other kind
of dogs hitched up with string harness
to the cart, and a few vegetables that
they are pulling around"
The pertinent comment is made-and
take the liberty of quoting it
verbatim: "There is no reason to doubt
that the gentleman saw on Pennsyl
r,-A 1,,
described. There is no doubt he might
have found on the continent of Europe
his "barefooted women in rags" But
if he had crossed over to the Wash
ington market he would have found on
it's outskirts numbers of men and wo-
men, some OF them white-haired, who
had brought in that morning from
great distances out of Washington on
their backs or behind tottering mules
pitiful handfuls of field flowers, wild
roots and perhaps a bunch or two of
garden products-quite as pathetic
spectacle as the pathetic one with
which he was trying to befuddle the
ways and means committee. All over
Europe he will find as prosperous vege-
table carts as those he saw in Wash
ington. All over the United States he
can find, if he will look, women in
rags!"
He adds Though 1 have visited
scores of factory and manufactur
towns in Europe, have never seen one /
where the impression of the conditions
of labor was more horrifying than that
one gets in going in and out Of Pitts
burg, and I'D and down the streets of
the lahoring mems quarter in that
city. Could there be anything more
un-American than incomes of a million
dollars a year-we hear of one of
$40, 1000, 900, a tariff-made, railroad rebate |
fortune-when the average income of
four-fifths of our American families is |
under $500? Would it not be vastly
better for a community, from every
standpoint, economic. social, moral, to
have 1000 citizens each with an income
of $1,000 than one with an income of
81 900, 600? Would not 1000 men with in
comes of $4,000 each do more for the |
country than one with an income of
SAC, 1000 could possibly do? 1t is child
ish to refuse to see that the privileges
which the present administration of
protective tariffs creates are responsible
for many of these grotesQue accumu-
lations"