Democratic Sentinel, Volume 10, Number 25, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 July 1886 — MINNESOTA BLAZING THE WAY. [ARTICLE]

MINNESOTA BLAZING THE WAY.

The First Republican State to Favor Tariff Reform. [From the St. Paul Pioneer Press.] There can no longer be any question of the fact that the State of Minnesota is committed to the cause of tariff reform. The Democratic party will declare, as a matter of form, for lower duties on imports. Minnesota Republicans are now as unequivocally in favor of a reduction of taxation. The members of the lower House who voted for the Morrison bill of two years ago were indorsed by conventions in their districts, and every one of them returned to Congress. In such local conventions as have been held thus far it will be observed that the action of the four Minnesota members who this year declared for tariff l eduction is as emphatically commended. The Pioneer-Press is heartily gratified at this recognition of the righteousness of that cause for which it has been fighting many a year against tremendous odds. There is now one State, reliably Republican, which can be depended upon to work for the interest of the burdened consumer against the manufacturer who has grown great upon profits extorted by the power of the Government. The time is coming when a majority of States will be ranged with Minnesota against the perpetration of a tariff whose enormities no reasonable theory of prolection to native interests can justify or palliate. It is not chiefly the mere fact that the people sustain a vote for tariff reform that is cheering, but the more significant fact that they are able to base their action upon sound reason and immutable principle. This, from the resolutions of the Grant County Convention, is final proof that the blind have been made to see: “We hold that the doctrine that protection protects the laboring classes of America is a delusion and a snare; that the laboring man of this country necessarily competes with the pauper iabor of the whole world, while the manufacturer is protected and made rich at the expense of all.” This is the home thrust before which the historic lie that supports our whole system of exorbitant duties must finally go down. The protective system was first designed to build up j’oung industries. The notion that it could raise or in any way affect the wages of labor was a clear afterthought, introduced when industries were no longer young or feeble, but when their conductors would not relinquish the profits wrung from labor by high tariffs. It is because of that falsehood that the protective system has stood by the votes of the workingmen. They have learned much. At last they are coining at the truth. The competition of labor with labor, especially where immigration is unrestricted and invited, is universal. Wages are higher in the United States than in Europe for the same reason that they are higher in St. Paul than in New York; for the same reason that capital which brings a return of 3 per cent, at the East brings 8 per cent, at the West. The tariff affects either about as much as the laws of Solon. Let the people once see this simplest of truths clearly. Let them understand that, whatever the claims of a high protective policy on other grounds, it does absolutely nothing to raise the wages of labor, while it does raise the cost of every manufactured article consumed by the family. Then, when this much is done, we shall be quite content to leave it to the people to say what shall be done with the tariff. The people of Minnesota are to be congratulated, in that they are among the first to shake off the delusion that has levied heavy tribute on labor and amassed vast fortunes out of the little earnings of the poor, through year after year of legislation for the few as against the many. The cause of tariff reform is marching on.