Democratic Sentinel, Volume 7, Number 28, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 August 1883 — A MAN [ARTICLE]

A MAN

WHO KNOWS WfiATHE IS TALKING ABOUT. His Reasons fob Cutting the Pbo tectivk School in which He was Reared. He Didn’t Think “A Good Thing Required so Much Lying About.” > ■ ■’ '■ - ;'■■■■ A Cour or reporter yesterday met J. n. Beadle formerly well known in this city, nnd now proprietor of «n independent free trade paper ot Rockville, and found in the course of twe hours that be still retained' fair use of his venal organs. After a conversation ranging from Plymouth Rook to San Diego and from miners, Mormons and ‘‘lnjuns” to the balance of trade and the wheat crop the iwo finally got down to the question of tariff and the following is a part of what was Raid; Reporter—Mr. Beadle, you seem to ,<be sevonteen degrees ahead of the democrats on free trade. Mr. ißeadle —Slightly, I don’t believe in indirect taxation at all for that matter—don’t think it is fair or honest. If I had my way I would collect the need d revenue from land, incomes and a specific tax on luxuries, but we don’t expect to have our way in this obfusticated world, and the best we oan do practically Is to return to the principles of the PolkWalker tariff of 1846, the| best and fairest tariff this country has had since the war of 1812. ft.—But you was a radical republican and Parke is a strong republican county. How lid you become a radical free trader? “ B.—Well, I always had an instinctive feeling in favor of freedom: it always seemed to me that industrial ami commercial freedom Was just as good in its way as civic freedom, religious freedom, 01 personal freedom. I couldn’t see why, jf the government had no rigtib to forbid my choosing a religion in Palestine it had no ri-Jht to forbid my choosing a market in Europe—l didn’t believe it would pay in the 1 >ng run ijt either case. Here Is the way I put it up; I earned this dollar, earned it honestly; and in earning it honestly I earned the right t* epend It where I please and it is a Vulgar impertinence for the govern* meat to interfere except to prevent crime or Immorality. In the long run the people will certainly lese money by such Interference. Free trade means just what it says; It is some* thing every nnperverted mind feels to be an Inherent, God-given right, if sueh a thing exists. So I felt when I thought about it at all; but seldom thought about it and knew very little about it before October, 1880. • B.—And what did you tnink the ; ? B.—l was making speeches for Garfield. (By the way he was the second man I ever got a vote for, for President, and both men I voted for were assassinated!) About three weeks bafore the state election they suddenly sprung this tariff question on us. 1 came home to hear what the great men said about it and the very first speech I heard disgusted me. It was stuck .full from first to last with the grossest mis-statements —perversions of history falsehoods about other countries, and even false quotations from our own statistics. It struck me at once as very queer that a good cause should require sueh fearful lying to back it up. The very first sentence I heard fronf a high tariff orator was a palpable lie —one that it seemed to mo that every intelligent hearer should have known to be such at the start. R.—#lat was It? I copied it verbatim; “Fellow citiauns, you ell know that before the War we hod no manufactories, and no home murker; birr market was in Eutop-*; we wero am excius sively agricultural people and low wages and hard times- We have always had oar<i times under a fre# trade and prosperity under a tariff, etc.” Now if that mfm had been un got eight. lies into one paragraph he woujd have gone acquitted. By looking at the census you will see that in 1860 our manufactures exceeded in value $1,800,-

000, not counting smrdl concerns in country towns; from 1850 to 1860 our manufactures increased 86 per cent., or more than twi<*e as fast as the po--puistion; that wages rose almost uninterruptedly from 1845 to 1861; that the foreign market in 1860 teok but three per cent of our wheat while it now vakes 36 per cent., and that wages have fallen on the average, of forty per cent, to ea rt h worker since 1870 By reference to Bradstreet you will see the heavy failures in 1874-1878 under our highest tariff outnumbered all-those in all the low tariffjyears of our history; and the records show that in the one year of 1877 we had more strikes and labor riots, more tramps and enforced idleness, more Rilltla calls and malicious destruction or property, mere wails of woe from the suffering, and ap peals for charity, than in all the four teen free trade years from 1847 to 1861. Of oeurse nobody pretends that tariff caused ail this; but what waß I to tblnx of a man who in sac« of such facta would make such a statement! it made me feel like a fool to even listen to him. And yet as late as kst October, Governor Porter made substantially the same statement in his speech at Rockvilie. I have often wondered whether the Governor really did not know hotter or whether he thought he was talking to a lot of country gillies, the latter I suspect. It makes me about half mad when a man comes to town and talks to our people as theugh they were a lot of noodles.

R.—But this did not make you a free trader? B.—Oh, no; it only set me to wondering why a good thing required so much lying.» When I read law with Judge Iglehkrt about the first thing I learned was that “truth is always consistent with itse f and has no need of falsehood.” „So I read and listen* , Another point much harped on thee was that free trade’ was a dtsosai failure in England—had reduced laborers to poverty, etc- Ifow, wh He I know th *t Biitish laborers were worse off than American, I thought everybody admitted" they were far better than in 1800 to ’4S r Ui* tariff times. Bo 1 sent for the ooaauiar report—eighteen full relumes, and examined the evidence, and there, especiall, in the consul-general’s summary, I found it set down and clearly preyed that the people of England are thirty per centum better fed. forty per centum better clothed, fifty per cent, better housed, and one hundred per cent, better educated than when England had a protective tariff. But I found lots more in these, consular reperts —in fact they are full of red meat. It is -here shown that travel wtrere yor will In other countries, the rate of wages goes down exactly as the tariff goes up. This is au unquestioned and most suggestive fact. Fret trade England pays the highest wages of any country In the old world, and low tariff Australia the highest of any new country; Austria hns the highest tariff in Europe and pays the lowest wag&s; Mexlc > the highest in America and the lowest wages; Germany has a tariff a trifle lewer than Austria and pays a trifle higher wages, and France is midway between England and Germany both iu tariff and wages. Without a single exception m Europe you will find high tariff and low wages together. B-—Now you have struck a point op which I-want facts. It is charged here that British laborers are wretehed; and there is much published just now about low wages there. What ts your opinion! B —The ta iff commission, I think has stated the truth very fairly Thnir report says that averaging ail trodos the Aanfrifts* laborer gets $3 where the Briton gets $2 ;but clothing, rents fuel and groceries (not meat or IWhad) or so ft 0 • ■h-Apnr in Jh.glftnd that It ni.btio up übeut naif of the difference, so the advantage in nominal dollars is fifty per cent, and in actual commodities about twentyfive pet Sent. In 1730, before the re* volution, according to Adam Smith, wages, were twioe as high in America as in England and if both oountries had free trade, or both a tariff, they would naturally ba more than twice as high here, this country navisg but

twenty .io the square mile, and Wat three hundred. On the matter of wages as between free trade England and the tariff nations of Europe, you will find a vorv interesting table iu | Spofford’s American Almanac, and a j very good book to read |a John W. Forney’s Letters from Europe—written in 1867. The funny part of it Is, he was a hyper calvinist on the tariff aad spatters his book ail over with warnings against free trade, and yet ii is conclusive proof that protection and custom houses are a curse to Europe- But does not common sense tell you without any statistics, that it one country could get ahead of another by restricting trade, that other country wo’d be equally freefto adopt the same device, and so the whole thing would reduce to mutual injury in the end. The other nations of Europe have been tariffing to hurt Enggland for a century and now what’s the result? England is ahead of all of them, and the longer the" tariff against her the less able they are to equal her. The English have no more skill and industry than the French and Germans; they have more freedom—that’s thg secret of it. R.—But they say this i 3 all very well for old countries, that It don't apply to us, our circumstances are so different. B-—ln other words, “What do we care for abroad?” They ought to add that there is a great difference, and that difference is overwhelmingly in our favor. We have a new country’ a vast area of fer ile land, more coal, iroa and water power than all Europe, and more gold and silver than all Ihe rest of the world; with fourteen thousand miles of Interior navigation and two hundred branches of manufacture in which no country can pete with us- And then to speak of noeding“protection 1” Bah! I sho’d be ashamed t*. look a foreigner in the the face anu talk of "protecting” this country by forbidding freedom 4n commerce. R._Do you think we can compete with the cheap labor of Europe? B —We do In our untariffed in-, dustriee we undersell them right at homo Here is the curious feature in all this business: While the “protected” industries are crying all the time for more “protection ” and protesting they cannot live witnout it the manufactures which spring up. under trot trad# are going right ahead, rarely troubled by strike* or collapses paying the highest kind ot wages and extending- >heir markets all over the world. And the strangest feature of all is that when the pa&i# the “protected" manufacturers turned 300,000 men out of employment while, the others kept right along and did not reduce the wages much until a year and a half after the panic. R.—What about unprotected manufactories? B.— The greatest, perhaps, Is agricultural tools and machinery,of which we make more than the rest of the world. One county in England has three hundred American reapersThey are being shipped fro n Odessa, on the Black Sea, into the wheat fields of Russia. The same with plows, hoes, forirs and many others. Also with wooden and wiilew ware, furniture, musical instruments, sewing machines and scores of others. None |of them ever had a cent es “protection”—they are the legitimate offspring of free trade, many of them were invented in free trade times, and yet men who boast of our beating the world in these free Industries are horrified at the idea of competition. But I have worse charge than this to make against protection—more than one article o' Amerioan production is sold in America at high tariff prices, and in E irope from the same mine or factory at free trade prices. A similar result occasionally folio’Tß nnr pit n* ’ iws T r instance: During nil ;ujt yeurs laur, sewing machines were sold in this country at S6O, they were letailed in England at S4O from the same factory, and the American fork (four-tined Oswego) while it retailed here at one dollar, sold in the hay districts of England at eighty-five cents. Since the patent|ran out tho home pi ice is down to the export price. But to

this day Michigan copper is soldi cheaper in England than America; and Onondaga salt can often be bo’t in Canada at thirty cents a barrel less than at the tanks in Sew York— These items merely illustrate what mere monopoly will do for a long suffering people. It.— And you became a free trader? B*—And so I concluded that freedom was a good thing of itself—just as good in commerce as in civil rights, religion or anything else. But excuse me, I had only go: started in giving my reasons. I have merely touched the surface as it were. Call ou me some rainy Sunday, and I will present the main points. It.—Perhaps I wilL Good day. B.—Adcii. O rtver! T*a Ja la lee.

How to Remove a Tight Ring A novel method of effecting the removal of a ring which lias become constrict d around a swolh n finger, or in any other similar situation, consists simply in enveloping thejafflict ed member, after , the manner of a circular banddge. in a length of flat India rubber braid, such as ladies make use of to keep their hats on the top es their heads. This should be accuiately applied -beginning, not close to the ring, but at the tip of the finger, and leaving no intervals between the successive turns, so as to exerj; its elastic force gradually and gently upon the tissues underneath. When the binding Is completed, the hand should be held aloft in a verticil] position, and In a few minutes the swelliog will be perceptibly diminish ed. The braid is then taken off and immediately reapplied in the same mannei, when, after another five minutes, the finger if again rapidiy uncovered, will be small enough for tbe ring to be removed with ea D e.— Lan gon, Gaz. des Hop.

Detroit News: A youug friend of ours at Dusseldorf, was pestered to fight a duel by a German companion, for no reason except that the German thought the Yankee should make a record, finally accepted. The American was an expert with that, most deadly of missiles, the base bail, and to the amusement of the whole college chose it as his weapou, and prescribed the ordinary pitching distance for the fight, leaving his rival to chose what weapon he pleased. After the word was given the chal lenger w s carried from the field, not fatally wounded, but doubled ud like one with the cholera, and howling like a stuck pig. The Yankee receiv ed nojmorc challenges in that institution.

Canine Intellisence.—A renoarka* ble instance of the fidelity and sagacity of the. dog lately happened at Mi if Ji'd Haven. Two men named Davies and Taylor were out in a boat wtiica was s wamped. The former of these was the owner of a dog, and while the men were struggling in the water the animal caught hold of I aylor the onjeet of supporting him; finding, however, that it was not his master to whom ho was rendering tliis assistance, he relinquished his grasp and went to the aid of Davies, his master, -upporting him until he was rescued bv a passing steamer, the other man being drown ed.

The Chinese have an ingenious way of protecting carrier Digeons from blids of prey. They fasten to the tail feathers a compact system of reeds, eight or ten in number, not weighing over a grain or two, which in the passage of the pigeon through the air emits a whistling sound shrill enoagh to scare the woukKbe-depre da tors. The plan is so effective that :t is coming into extensive use in Gei many.

Mariposa (Gal.) Herald: On the evening of July 4, in Yosemite valley Albert Howard went to his bed-room to put on nis boots. The boots were on 'he floor, under the bed. and Albert pulled them out and was aoout to put his foot In the leg of -me when he heard the motion of some loose article in the • oot. He a- one-* turn ed it upside down and gave it a shake, when lo! a iarge rattlesnake, with seven rattles, tumbled upon the floor.