Democratic Sentinel, Volume 8, Number 6, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 March 1884 — Facte for Workingmen. [ARTICLE]

Facte for Workingmen.

The telegraph announces that all nail factories in the West have been closed for six weeks, which throws not less than 5,000 men out of employment. In this brief announcement lies another illustration of the beauty and excellence of protection. In the whole protected list there is none so highly favored as the manufacture of nails, the duties ranging from S2O to SBO a ton. In superior machinery, organization of labor, raw materials, and all the meand and appliances to boot, the manufacturer of nails in this country can defy the. competition of the world. If there were no protective system largely enhancing tlje cost of all production the nail manufacturers of the United States need fear no rivalry from any quarter. But by the operation of the tariff they are mainly confined to the home market, and when that is supplied there is no outlet for the surplus production. By the exorbitant duties, which tax consumers, production is unhealthily stimulated, and at frequent intervals the combination of nail makers must suspend manufacture in order that the supply may not too far outstrip the demand, and that prices may be maintained. In the meantime the thousands of hands who are turned out of employment are obliged to consume their earnings in enforced idleness, or to gain a living as best they may in some unaccustomed occupation. When the demand springs up again operations begin anew, prices are raised against consumers, and the old songs about the blessings of protection to the workingmen of America are resumed. So far from protecting American labor, the tariff exposes them to just such vicissitudes as] this which the nailmakers are now undergoing.— Philadelphia Record. We invite the attention of the monopoly, high tariff organs te the foregoing, from the Record, and we also iwite the attention of workingmen # to Aggie same subject. There is no mistake pfbout the facts, and the deductions are m consonance with them. An immensely protected industry has, for the time being, collapsed. Workingmen are driven to idleness and to the penalties of idleness. The Republican tariff law protects the monopolist, prostrates the workingman. The capitalist’s money may be idle—it may earn no dividends. It may remain locked in a bank vault. What of it ? When the owner wants it he finds that it has not suffered from being idle. The capital of the laboring man is his ability to work, his health and strength. Stop earnings and yon reduce him to poverty, hunger, rags, sickness and death. Does Congress make laws to protect labor capital? Not a bit of it. And the nailmakers are finding it out. Protection does not protect labor, it simply protects money capital and degrades labor. Labor has been fed on fiction. It is now getting facts, and the facts are driving fiction to the wall.— lndianapolis Sentinel.