Democratic Sentinel, Volume 10, Number 44, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 December 1886 — Free Trade Facts. [ARTICLE]

Free Trade Facts.

A correspondent asks if we can name any “free-trade facts”—if there really are “any facts favoring free trade.” We couid fill a year s Million with nothing else. The fact is that all the facts are on our side of this great discussion. The greatest theorists, tee most absolute and monumental moonshiners, are the protectionists—and they always have been in jnst this category. But let us take a few" of these facts, entirely at random, and lßt it be understood that they can be multiplied indefinitely. One of the greatest and most patent facts is that for three thousand miles east and : west, and fifteen hundred miles north and | south, between all the States of the Union, ; with the greatest po-sible diversity of local ; interests, local advantages, climate, 6oil, j mineral and other resources, general pro- j duetion, and labor and wages—free trade, absolute has prevailed for just a century, and with universally admitted beneficial results. Another fact is that the average wages of all engaged in the production of iron ore in the United States, is the veriest trifle over a dollar a day. Tho unprotected farms pay j belter than that. Another fact is that more than a hundred years.ago, when thero was no tariff at all and England was doing her best to break down the colonial industries, we manufactured pig-iron and shipped it and sold it in England—and at a profit at that! Think of this fact. Massachusetts is a highly protected Suite, with a large Congressional deb gation. In Lawrence, one of the most highly protected cities in the State, capital invested in manufactories has made a net gain of over 20 per cent, per annum for twenty consecutive years. The wages of the “highly protected” laborers • in these same manufactories is now about 85 cents a day for men and 65 cents a day for women! child-labor, of which thero is altogether too much, is “thrown in.” The Fall River (Massachusetts) protected mills pay the stockholders about forty-six per cent, per annum —and'the protected laborer about (average) $290 per annum. Cut this fact out and stick it in the top of your hat, ready for the next high tariff man that blows his ancient horn in your ear. From 1830 to 1880 is called the low tariff period; from 1800 to 1883 has been a high old tariff period. Now see the results—facts: Advance of AdvHnoe of Net Wages. Pffipes. Gain. 1831-1800, per cent,.. <0.6 1?:7 37.9 1800-1883, per cent.. .21.1 14.5 9.9 That hits hard, doesn’t it? Here’s another. For several years the combined Bessemer steel companies paid the St. Louis Vulcan Iron Works $70,900 per annum to lie idle and give them the control of the market. Yet they need protection “to enable them to better remunerate American labor.” A fact well worth remembering and quoting is that nine-tenths of our real American labor has been driven out of the “protected” manufactories to make room for “the pauper labor of the effete old wurld.” It is a fact that the protected labor of this country is but one-twentieth of the whole. Onr increase of wealth per inhabitant under low tariff for twenty years—lß4o to 1850—was 130 per cent.; under high tariff, 1850 to 1880, it was only 86 per cent. Be- | tween 1850 and 1860 it was 66 per cent.; 1870 and 1880, 22 per cent. Give this to some tariff “fact” hunter. The Manufacturer and Industrial Gazette, Holyoke, Mas 3., admits that “the English cotton weaver receives (average) twenty-four per cent, higher wages than the American weaver.” Throw this brick at the right man! —The Million ,