The Birmingham age-herald., 1911-06-29

Washington, June 28.-(Special)-Two remarkable speeches were delivered on the wool bill in the early stages of the general debate on that hybrid piece of | economic statecraft. One was by a MT. Redfeld, a democratic representative from Brooklyn, N Y.., and the other was bv MT. Berger, the socialist from Mil waukee. Wis. I believe that MT. Red
 fields speech marks an epoch He Is manufacturer and a free trader am now an old man, approaching three score years and ten, but ere I leave the stage
 expect to see the day when the real democratic idea of tariff reform will be crystallized into law, through the infu- ence of the manufacturers of America, who are rapidly coming to see that 1t Is their mission to make goods for the world at large and not for our republic in par ticular, and free trade is the only means to that end.
 For 50 years, nearly, we have shackled trade. In our laws we have said that It is profitable to sell and ruinous to buy. We have enacted that when Yankee sold a pair of shoes to fisherman in New Foundland he made a profit; but if he
 bought a kit of fish from the man to whom he sold the shoes, he was inevi- tably ruined. If this fallacy-sell every thing and buy nothing-prevailed every where. and that is all that protection" ia the world would come to standstill. I have not yet read MT. Redfelds speech, but have read the speech of MT.
 Berger, the socialist, and the first one of that political faith who ever held seat
 in the American Congress He will have company in the next Congress. This man is to the present age what Joshua R. Gid dings was to the congresses Of siXty years ago, except that he Is respected, whilst Giddings was regarded as noth- | ing less than a traitor and little less than | a lunatic The idea of a protective tariff 1 is what makes socialism possible in our country. If the government by it's tax
 ing power shall fatten one interest, why
 shall not the government by general leg
 islation take care of all of us?
 Mir. Berger scorned the lie that the tariff
 is for labor. He cited that nowhere else
 in the world is labor insuted by such i'm
 position on its intelligence. In some of
 the leading nations of continental Flu rope they have protective tariffs, notably
 Germany and France, but there nobody
 affronts human intelligence by pretend
 ing that the thing is for the benefit of
 the working man. Here in our own coun-
 try the tariff was first for infant indus
 tries. Then it was to give the farmer a
 home market. After the industries were established and the farmer got his home market it was suddenly discovered that
 the tariff was not for these, but to give high wages to labor. Well. Mir. Berger made it so plain that the tariff Is not for
 labor that he who is not both a way
 farer and a. fool is bound to agree with him. Get his speech on the wool bill and
 read it.
 MT. Berger contends that 1t Is the or
 ganization of labor that makes high
 wages, not. the protective tariff, which,
 he holds, is burden and not staff, a sword and not & shield, in its relation to every man who works with his hands to provide for his stomach. He called atten- ton to the fact that we have always had free trade in labor. and under our pres ent law the product of labor is excluded
 In a very ectasy of fallacy I one day heard William Alden Smith triumphantly and exultingly proclaim that men left Europe to seek homes in America be- cause our tariff protected them. We'll, men leave Massachusetts for Kansas, they leave Kentucky for Texas, and for the same reason that men leave Europe for America. The tariff has no more to do with it than the growing of the cock causes the break of day. There is more room in America than in Europe, more in Kansas than in Massachusetts, more in Texas than in Kentucky.
 But to get back. The labor union is a
 trust that would be smashed all to flinders If it did not have so many votes.