The Salt Lake tribune. [volume] (Salt Lake City, Utah) 1890-current, 1910-09-14
ously avoid consultation OF the Codex
Troano at the University Of Berlin.
SHOOTS ADAPTATIONS.

speech which Apostle Smoot made il
the Senate and which the American
Protective Tariff League is circulatin,
as campaign document,
The underlying principle Of it is tn
same as that relied upon in the argu
ment for free trade. That is, it make
no particular difference what the nom
lnal wage or pay may be as long a
that pay or wage Will buy the nccessi
ties Of life, perhaps to as full an extent
l-or even more-in free trade Eng
land, where wages are low. as in pro
tectlve America, where wages arc
high. It is what one can buy with hi.
wages that counts, not merely the fig
ure expressing them
1t is in carrying out his argument
however, where Smoot gives himself
away the most completely He falls
back upon the method in details relied
upon by the silver advocates for the
figures, statistics, and comparisons by
means of which they undertook to es.
| tablish the stability of silver as a
measure of values, Thus, he shows
that ten bushels of corn, measured by
the wholesale prices Of Il number of sta
pie articles, puts the farmer far more
to the good now than in 1896 The
articles he compares with are coffee,
molasses, rice. salt, sugar, tea, carpets,
cotton flannel, gingham, sheetings,
shoes, sultings, coal, petroleum, barbed
wire. nails. brick, cement. lime, white
oak. shingles, and spruce. 1t will be
observed that this is a carefully Sc
lected list of articles which avoided
many of the necessities of life. 1t says
nothing about flour, about meats, about
vegetables, about house rents, and in
dry goods it makes few special Sc
lecIions that other selections in the
same classification might utterly over
throw. However that is not what we
wish to get at now, but to show the
method EMPLOYED The same compari.
son as made for ten bushels of corn
IS made for ten bushels of wheat, q
bale of cotton. twenty bushels of oats,
twenty bushels Of rye, twenty bushels
of barley, one ton of hay, one hundred
pounds of hops, twenty bushels of pota-
toes ten bushels Of flax seed, a choice
to extra steer, n three hundred pound
hog, twenty pounds of butter, and
thirty dozen eggs, We may remark
in passing that the consumer who has
to buy this thirty dozen of eggs,
twenty pounds of butter. this three.
hog, this choice to extra
steer, etc, will not be especially i'm
pressed with the showing that it costs
aim two or three times as much to buy
any one of the things enumerated as
t did in 1896; so that Smoot' s speech |
8 a boomerang. For, while it shows |
hat the farmer gets so much more now
han in 1896 for these things, it must
necessarily show also that the one who |
buys the eggs or meat or potatoes, etc,
must necessarily pay Just as much more
or. them as the farmer receives. AS
| campaign document, therefore, this
peech of Smoot's is valuable only in
arming communities. AS plea to
manufacturing communities where the
aborers have to buy these things from
he farmers and must pay now two or
hree times as much for them as they
id fourteen years ago, the speech can
ardly be a success. The increases in
'ages form no such ratio now as com.
areu with 1896 as the prices of farm
roducts do. The latter are shown to
4ya,T |
S then, whereas the wages have in
reased, when they have increased at
II, at snail s pace by comparison.
yhen we add TO this the fact that the
nderlyIng principle of the speech is
ne free trade basis, it can at once he
cen that this Smoot speech, while use
III III demagogic and dishonest way
1 farming communities, must be kept
,rictly away from the reading of those
'ho earn their money by daily wages
weekly or monthly salaries. AS to
,ls latter class. the showing is an alb. =
'lutely disastrous one for the aim of
lie Smoot argument"
But this only by the way What we
gum W oNlOHSlldDC WAS IUaI In max"
lg this speech the method employed d
Apostle Smoot is precisely the same :,
; that adopted by the silver advocates U
fourteen years ago and afterward.
was hrst presented in its fuIlncss
Y Senator Jones. of Nevada. in his
reat silver speech in the Senate in =
SIC. The method was to show that
one article with another. the
ictuatIons in prices followed more
osely the fluctuntions of silver than
icy did those of gold, the deduction
ling that silver was a more stable d
easnre of value than gold And now u
e have that same detail Of compari.
III prices revived by Smoot in the
rvice of his lame and hating arpu. O
ent showing that comparing one
ticle with another the farmer is far
'tter off now than he was fourteen !
'ars ago, that the articles he pro.
ices will buy moro of what other