The Alaska citizen., 1911-09-25

member of this house.
 There is probably no other l.-l-- lative body in rhe world jH "G.. there are so many earnest. Nrl-.' and interesting men II W'Ner. t". interpret things aS yuu s,, 'a'm and you s,e them from 'ho Join. ot vie owf your class r.c capitalist class
 The fcst question y.u naturally ask of any new member i~. What Is your message
 Now. Mir Chairman. hay. a message To deliver from the mos. advanced and iureilig nt section o' the toiliug mass,s-trom m.llj Hs ot men and women.
 If you will bear with me tr rart ence for all hour shall rry .u de-. liver a part of that mos~ag, ta, best of my ability
 I am told thaI oratoty counts tof little or nothing in this house hal you want facts | am very glad that. because l hope ro convince te. within five minutes that ] am no an orator. and within 'ou minute. that have sCme facts
 Now. gentlemen. just a~h Eav kindly to oycrl Hok my Milwaukee accent. but to overlook uo'hiug ol~' u.aughterD
 Scant Protection for the Laborer.
 Some Of the gcurl. men here aa'r repeated the old threadhIse taiIaeN that the high tariff is to protect labor
 Now. want ii understood that there is no such thing aS protection ,o labor in any tariH hiil. l Wan 70 say this in the name ot many mil lions of enlightened WorKhgm-u in this country. and in all other civil ized countries, who think fua rHDW selves
 Moreover gentlemen. you ara nnu in the habit of making iaw~ for rl' protection of labor. tAMlaH~" u. the Democratic sideD
 You are continually making iaw- for the protection ot life and Fr r. erty for the protection 1i The lives of those who own inc property. and for the protection 1hc prop erty they own. You are continually making laws for manufacturers. hank CTS. and merchants.
 But the workingman who has uo
 
 sCant protection. indeed.
 If he wants To he protected. h. must commit crime; he must steal or get drunk and disturb JHa peace or become tramp. Then the law gets hold of him ad gives him pro lection. Then he gets the pr tectiou of the jail or the pcnitrutiarE
 As long as he is well and dee H5 the law does not protect him. Tn high tariff does nor protect him.
 The Kernel of the riff Issue.
 What is the philosophE Ol The tariff?
 The history of the protective ta. iii is the same in every country
 Agricultural countries suh~idizC manufacturers fir the purpose u, creating industries
 In the seventeenth and cighlccnrH centuries England became the for most manufacturing country of the world, Germany, which before hal supplied the world with mauutar tured goods had been thrown back in civilization and culture by the horrors of the religious wars incidruD 10 the Reformation.
 England bought the raw material of the world and sold the manuiac tured product. In order to build ui industries in their own countries the European rulers tried to protect thej. manufacturers against the impc ra- tion of English goods by putting up a high tariff.
 The history of the American tarifi is very much the same. The tariti reaches back to the days Of Alex ander Hamilton and is based upon the same idea.
 It simply meant substituting the manufacturers so as to build up il. dustres It meant that 1he nation was paying the manufacturer a bo- nus for investing his money in man nfacturing
 The result in every country has been the same.
 The high tariff al first stimulated competition. Everybody who had any money or any business tai nj went into the manufacturing buSi- ness.
 That tendency, of course. cut down the profits. It eliminated in this country about 1892. when one Cl thos periodical crises which are a part of our industrial system set in.
 The result was natural enough. No matter whether We have a high tariff or free trade. competition has a tendency to weed out the economically weaker concerns
 That process of weeding cut is nightly stimulated by these indus trial crises, matter to which l shall refer again later.
 Competition Always Kills Competition
 The process of wedding out went merrily on in this country. Toward the end of the last century mum Der of the remaining big firms found it more profitable tO unite than t continue the fight.
 There you have the origin of trusts.
 It is not fair to ascribe the origin of trusts entirely, or even mainly. to high tariff.
 The high tariff is responsible for the trusts only as it stimulates com petition, and inasmuch as it subsi- dizes the manufacturers.
 But the outcome of competition is always the same. Competition always kills competition in the end. We find trusts in high tariff America, and in free trade England. We find trusts in Germany and even in little Hol- land. As matter of fact, every flourishing industry winds up in a trust.
 I can go still further. I will say