Democratic Sentinel, Volume 10, Number 25, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 July 1886 — Bad Times Under Protection. [ARTICLE]

Bad Times Under Protection.

In searching for the cause of business depression it is a plain indicate of common sense to seek for it an existent condition of things rather than to attribute it to causes that do not exist. We know that since 1870 there have been ten years of bad times to about five years of prosperity. We know that protective tariffs are enacted solely with reference to business. They have been recommended as a sure means to promote prosperity. We know that this country has a higher tariff than any other civilized country on the globe. We also know that business is not prosperous. The tariff has failed to even maintain good times. There has been nothing that even approximated free trade. Protection has been in full force all these unprosperous years. As an efficient cause of good or evil to business it is in complete operation to-day. The people are taxed on an average $47 on every SIOO worth of dutiable goods to promote business prosperity, and yet are having.had years two-thirds of the time. From these undeniable facts what deductions can he fairly drawn with respect to the effect of tariffs on business? As a reward for heavy taxation are good times realized? What have we experienced? Beginning in 1873, we had about six years of unexampled business depression and bankruptcy. These were followed by less than three years of activity. Again, in the spring of 1882 the present period of exhaustion began. Early in that year the labor strikes in the Chicago steel works commenced. They were a protest against reduced wages. About nine out of the past twelve years have been years of stagnation, and all of them have been protective tariff years. Work has not been plenty, and wages have decl ned. After 1873 the country was filled with tramps, and crima increased. A few months since 1,000,000 idle workingmen were officially reported. If these facts prove anything they prove that protective taxation as an agency to promote prosperity is a failure. Under a high tariff we are having glutted maikets, depressed trade, discontented labor, and bad times. Fiee trade Uas not caused these things. Trade has not been and is not free. The country has had nothing but a tariff-restricted trade. Enormous penalties are exacted to prevent trade between onr people and the people of other countries. Monstrous taxes are required on articles entering our seaports. By such means—miscalled protection—we have driven business from our shores. This policy is an adequate cause for business depression and bad times. Under it, at least, such are the results. No wonder that intelligent workingmen, as is evidenced by the recent demand of

the 40,000 workers in the textile industries of Philadelphia for tariff reform, are questioning the alleged benefits of protection. Labor, they realize, is free the world over, but trade in the products of labor is restricted by the tariff. The restricted markets are quickly supplied, and then come the evils of overproduction, stagnation, and idleness. These are clearly the results of the trade-restricting tariff, aud the hardships fall c’ iefly upon the textile workers. And is not this a legitimate—an inevitable —consequence of the tariff? Its object is the restriction of trade in the products of labor. It prevents a world-wide buying and selling. It is, therefore, the relentless enemy of labor. It limits the sale of the products of laber, increases the cost of living by taxing articles of consumption, makes employment and wages unstable and uncertain, and causes business depression and bad times. —Jacksoti (Mich.) Patriot.