Democratic Sentinel, Volume 8, Number 4, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 February 1884 — Tariff Reform [ARTICLE]

Tariff Reform

Talks with Masufacturers aud Merchants—Some Remarkable Statements by as Irou on tin WagejQtiestior —A Merchant’s The-ury-of Ibe R. lation oi a ProtSktiye Tariff to Bucket Shop Gambling— Carp'ts for the Laborer. flndiauaj <lis News.] Pursuing his investigations as to the opinionsjof merchants and manufacturers in Indianapolis on the tariff quesj tion, the reporter called at the office of the Indiana Bolt works and interviewed Mr. O. R. Olsen, who is the superintendent of this important establishment. His statements are a little the most direct to a given point and defiant of the protective theory, that the reporter has listened to for some time.*

Mr. Olsen said: “I promised to commit my thoughts to paper for yo , because I write the American language more clearly than I speak it, but I left the manuscript in my buggy this morning, and it has got lost. I will say as part of what

I had written, and I want you to reproduce my ideas in the ulainest and strongest words that you can, for I should like to see somebody that has nerve to controvert them; indeed they are not idea®, they are facts. I am going to speak about the tariff on iron only, for I have worked all my lire in iron, and I understand very little about anything else. If the tariff were absolutely stricken from iron in every shape, raw ore, iron plates, steel blooms, and everything into the composition of which enters the iron, trade of America would be in a vastly more prosperous condition The demand for ore would be greater, because the consumption of manufactured iron would be greater, and it would be greater because the markets of the whole world would be open to the trade. The workman wo’d be benefitted because he co’d buy more goods with his wages and his wages would not be lowered by the abolition of the protective tariff; it is probable that they would be increased. I have worked in the largest establishments of England, and I remember when such few articles of American machinery or agricultural imp lements as were offered for sale on the English market were contemptuously spoken of as “Yankee goods ” All that is changed now. They are respectfully spoken of as “American manufactures.” That is simply because we make better articles for farm use, and better engines and saws than the English can do. The feature of “specialty” is peculiarly American. For example, the average hoe of the English maker, is a coarse and clumsy weapon for breaking clods; the American hoe is made for some special purpose, light for a garden, heavy for a corn row —medium for a muscular wo-, man or feeble man in a tobacco patch. It is so with everything we make—it is not a bvnglmg, general purpose article? it is a thing made with a special adaptation to a special purpose. And neatness is j ust as distinctive a feature of American work. Our engines

and reapers are not only good, they are tasteful and elegant Right here protectionists tell me that all this is owing to the fact that the wages of the American workman have been so liberal that'he has grown into a higher degree of intelligence than the English workman, and has consequently made better articles, and that his wages are high because he has been protected from the competition of his lower paid brother in England. The wages are higher, and the high wages may have'had the beneficial effect attributed.’ to them, but they are not high because the inferior work of the lower paid Englishman is excluded from the American market by the operation of 1 he

. tariff. The English goods of which I speak can not, and do not compete with American manufactures even ■in England itself, where the wages were lower and the manufacturer has no duty to pay on for eign ore. Listen, When it comes to the finest goods of iron make, we make them cheaper than England does, so that high skilled labor in America can not be affected by competition with the cheap English labor, for the products of that labor do not hold their own on their own ground, far less can they cross the ocean and compete with us. As an example, I will say that the iron planes and lathes which we use in our shops would cost far more in England, with its cheap labor and free trade, than they cost here withfour dearer labor and high tariff. These high class articles can be shipped to England and sold below English prices Why? Fromf two reasons - • The first is that the American workman does vastly more work in a day than the European one. I have had experience in the matter, and I say, that a foreman of a shop in America gets as much work, and of a be tter quality, out of ten American workmen as is got by a foreman in England out of fifteen. So that if the pay of the American workingman is $3 a day aganst the Englishman’s $2, it also follows that he has do e just three dollars’ worth of work to the other’s, two dollars’ worth. We can make engines cheaper here than they can in England. In fact, whenever highly skilled labor is needed, we can undersell the English. Nothing proves more clearly the fallacy of the statement that the ~tariff protects labor. The high grade of labor and the extra amount of it de manded by foremen are the things that makel American labor high. The duty on iron ore makes the cost of plate iron $23,00 a ton, when it ought to be sl2, and this in turn so enhances the price of machinery as to limit the market for it, and thus the number of articles made is limited, and of course the demand for la-

bor coorrespondingly lowered. It ts on low grades of tools, and on articles in which unskilled labor is used, that the English can compete with us, and this merely results in the employment by American manufacturers of the labor of boys and unskilled men at low rates, to the detriment of the skilled laborer. “In the_ rolling mills and puddling furnaces where muscular strength is needed rather than skilled labor, the tariff may, perhaps, have some effect in raising the workman’s wages. Not much, thongh, for if the foreman pays 40 per cent, per diem more for the work he gets 50 per cent, per diem more in labor than his English rival ■ does.” Such are the views of Mr. Olsen on tariff and labor. The reporter next journeyed to the packing house of kingan & co. Two of the pa tn era were in- , terviewed, but Mr. Sinclair

was the chief spokesman. He said: “Our firm is not a political factor; the members, are maiixly British subjects doing business in America, and such views as are held on the tariff are such as are the result of reading and observation in the science of political economy, or of the operation of the tariff on our busines-\ JJhe on 1 y arß- • which wo n s«e which is sunju-.K to a duty is

salt. We use the English salt because it is the best, we sho’d use it if it were dearer than American salt. By a peculiar provision of thetariff law it is both dearer and of the same price as the native article The duty on imported salt is twelve cents on each one hundred pounds. When we use it on meat that is to be exported to Europe the duty is refund-

ecl to us by way of rebate, but when we use it on meat that is to be sold to the American Citizen we are charged the full duty if r it. Thus prime cured American meat can be sold cheaper to an English purchaser than to an American one. Ihe amount of salt used is about one pound by weight to ev jry six of meat. The Amer ican laborer is protected by haying to pay a duty on the salt m his meat, while the American government permits it to be furnished duty free to the English or German labor ers. 1 here is no other way in which the tariff affects our business, and, as meat is a prime necessity, we should not be benentted as a firm by change in the tariff. Speaking of the Question of protection philosophically it may be said that protection is good for “infant industries,” as it is good for infants of the human race, and just as you will have a puny man from a too long protected infant, so you will have a dwar fe d and contracted trade from a too long protected industry. The question is: Are American industries in an infantile condition?” If so, protect them, but if they have lassed the infantile period the protection will be injurious. tis a fact that out f the sev-enty-three writers on political economy whose works, gathered from all nationaare deemed worthy a place in the libra’, ry of the British museum, six-ty-nme are in advocacy of free trade.” <

Another member of the firm, speaking of the absence in the British market of those violent fluctuations in the prices of grain and provisions which characterize operations in Chicigo and New York, said that perhaps the American surplus capital which now floats in the stock and produce exchanges might be profitably diverted into manufactures were the markets of the world thrown open and the periodical de pressions caused by our production for a mere home market prevented. MR. OTTO STKCHHAN, Whose large factory fronts on Alabama street and Ft. w ayne avenue was next visited. He said, “So far as I am opposed to the present tariff system, I am opposed to it on general principles. My own business would not be greatly increased, at least not d’recti y, by tariff reduction,though it wo’d of course, feel the general impulse of improvement which would follow the increased purchasing power of money. In the manufacture of lounges and chairs the tariff raises the price to the purchaser, because wherever a carpet covering is used a tariff tax. of not less than 33 per cent, is paid. Fine carpeting is generally used on lounges, very seldom is the cost less than $3. Now, if $1 of this be duty the purchaser necessarily pays it—the manufacturer of the lounge, of course, puts that $1 in the bill. And carpet manufacturing in this country is not exactly an

infant industry; it is a flourishing monopoly. The whole American carpet trade is in hands of seven men. who are protected against foreign competition by the government, which levies a to riff tax; and who protect themselves against home competition by the formation of a pool or league by which prices can be cut so low for a while as to

break down the effort of any new adventurer in the trade. Of course, w ion the ’.ival is killed off by process, es bankruptcy the prices are raised. — A carpet factory must be better, property than a gold mine. It is the consumer who pays the? bill, as I have said before; and the laborer would have more and better carpt ts ip his house if the tariff were modified. Hie general effects of the present tariff can not but

tariff REFORM, be injurious to the growth of American manufactures, because it is ‘a class law, arranged on the principle ot Protect this man because he owns some sheep,’ and ground which contains ore. There is always a special plea tor projection of a special class foi i special purpose. Now history teaches no lesson more dainly than that class legislation cripples trade, because trade seeks myriads of chan aels, some of which re necessarily blocked up by legislation which is made in the interest of individuals. And, though the Party newspapers do not Sbem aware of it, there 's a strong feeling of opp lition to the P resen * h tob7 S &y benefe"." eredthat the June f or a high protective tariff in Amenc has passed away. It was use ful once; it is injurious now. What we now need is not protection but development. The Amer ic a n manufacturer is strong enough to take care of h&' Vneeds larger man kpffi But monopolies. Use that in the carpet trade, will cling to protection, for if a knot of seven men can virtu“tn try kt large is the sufferer, S°modlrlte melXom building new factories for foreign trade, allot which would man to work in them, and all 3 which would bebidders for labor, which would raise in mice according to the demand Fot it- Were this not a presidential year the mutterings of dissatisfaction among lican manufacturers would be loud and deep. If they keep to ranks it wBl be from fear of the Democratic policy on money matters.. It depends on who is nominated and on what platform he is nominate edLas to whether party ranks Si be kept dosed. But. any how the tariff question will be vigorously discussed.

“PrcUetion in a nutshell means A right far aartaia classes; 1 little lair that intervenes To help them rob the masses, Uhe rich men put thdlr prices.high, * Dhe poor shall be compelled to buy. F [Fi ankfort (Ky.) leoman The iron monopolists o Pennsylvania have reduced ‘he wages of their workmen bo sixty cents per day. How "protection does protect” the vorkmen in the monop institutions of the country!— Protection to home industry !’g Verily! Bracelets for gentlemen are if the leap year novelties WHAT FOB? k boy asa girl a slashing went, . knd heither of them cared a asnt How fa«t they rid. While on they slid— What fcr, and where 1 'he air was vftry cold and raw— The litt'e boy, he frocs ais paw. Still an they sped In their little sled— What for, and where? ’'he little girl, so young and fair, iOst nearly all her golden hair, They went so fast, Their friends they passed— What'fnr. and where ! .’he horse, of course, got badly seared, knd run, and pitched, and kicked and reared, On went the pair— Now tlmest there— What for, and where? ’he boy and girl were tumbled outShe sprained her ear he broke his snout— Then up they got, And off they sot— What for. and where? "or Levino’s little candy store— To get some candy—Nothing more— They got it, tou. And so may you— What for? Why from 11 to 40 cents a pound; nd our ni *e. taweet GaagnuJans and lelicious ci .»am candies and chdcoite goods,»owing to a heterrogeneus coug’omorarisL of unforsesn iScUltiee. at prices to suit all. HENRI LEVINO. Proprietor leyfno’s andy Factory, Ronwclaer 4 idlana.