Democratic Sentinel, Volume 12, Number 20, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 June 1888 — REVENUE REFORM. [ARTICLE]

REVENUE REFORM.

Nine Out of Ten of Our Protected Industries Do Not Need Protection. There’s Millions in Protected for the Three Great Refining Finns of This Country. Protection the Natural Parent of Monopoly Proved by a Powerful Array of Facts and Figures. Labor Driven to the Wall and Nearly Half a Man’s W ages Goes to Enrich Monopolies. "If free trade should prevail our shops would he shut down and our workmen be thrown out of employment. ” This is a scare, pure and simple. Thorold Rogers has conclusively pointed out that there are three classes of industries which can get along without protection: First, those that have no competition ; second, those that can produce their goods with marked superiority over all other countries; third, those that are shielded from foreign competition by the cost of transportation. Nine out of ten of our protected industries fall in the one or the other of these classes. The tenth one, being maintained purely by taxation, is a nuisance and ought to be abolished, because it is a subtraction from the general wealth of the people, and from the earnings of the unprotected workman. “But, Mr. Free Trader, what will the poor workmen in that tenth industry, which you call a nuisance, do when your free trade abolishes it?” Here, I confess, is where the protectionist has the advantage of the free trader. He can always point to some local misfortune which npight be caused by free trade, and the free trader has to resort to argument to show that what might be locally a misfortune is yet a gain for all. When John and James lose their job everybody sees that, but an argument not everybody can see. What would become of John and James who are thus thrown out of employment when the industry that exists purely by and for taxation is abolished? I answer, that for one chance of employment which they may lose free trade will give them two chances. Let me illustrate. By the grace of the tariff we have become a sugar-producing country. The tariff has helped to make sugar-growing a profitable business for some planters in Louisiana. They produced last year, trying their utmost, not quite 500,000,000 pounds of raw sugar. That is hardly one-sixth of our entire home consumption, for we import every year about 2,500,000,000 pounds more, on which we pay some fifty-one or fifty-two million dollars of tax, which makes every pound of sugar we buy cost from 1 to 3'<i cents more than it ought to. It is an unneccessary tax, too. Our government does not need it, for it is getting now $125,000,000 more a year than it knows what to do with. That tax takes from $5 to $lO at least out of each housekeeper for sugar and piles them up in the. United States Treasury. Would they not do far ‘more good in the pocket of the man who earned them, than to hoard them away as a temptation to thievish public schemes ? Why do they not abolish the sugar tax? Because it is “protection” to the three great sugar refining firms of the country against the ■“pauper labor of Europe." There’s millions in it, and they have made vast fortunes, every man of them, at the expense of. the people. But to our illustration: These firms sell sugar to the American consumer for 6’,.j cents (wholesale) and to the English consumer for 3% cents. Why the difference in favor of the foreigner? I will tell you. When they import raw sugar for refining into crushed, granulated, and loaf sugars, our Government allows them a drawback from the duty, amounting to 50 cents on the hundred. [Here the writer errs. The drawback is paid when refined sugar is exported. It is by law equal to the duty on the raw sugar of which the refined is made, less 10 per cent, That, however, does not impair the general truthfulness or force of the illustration. —Editor.] Do they give the American consumer—that is, you and me—the benefit of the drawback. Oh, no. They sell us sugar at full tariff rates, and then send their surplus sugar across the ocean to the Englishman and let him have it for 2% cents per pound less. The English sugar-refiners have, therefore, been undersold and have gone out of business, J’he English Johns and Jameses in sugar-refining were thrown out of employment and raised an outcry. Parliament appointed a commission to inquire into their grievances. What did they find? They found that instead of 4,000 Johns and Jameses employed in sugar-refining there were now 12,000 of them working in the jam and confectionery trades which had sprung up from the cheap sugars which their foreign friends, and we among the number, have been kindly taxing themselves to furnish them. And so, Mr. Protectionist, it will be with us when free trade brings us the cheap products of foreign countries. It will not take so much labor to satisfy our wants as under your system, and thus we can devote our surplus time to new forms of industry and the satisfaction of new wants.

For one industry suppressed by free trade, two •will spring up in its place. It is free trade ■which tends to diversify the industries of a country and to create that abundance of everything which constitutes real national wealth. It is the tendency of protection to concentrate the industry of a country into the particular forms favored by law, and to drive them into combination with each other. Protection is the natural parent of monopoly. An industry guaranteed handsome profits by Governmental taxation soon draws a host of rivals into competition with it. They want their share of the ■“good thing,” too. The result is that the market is soon" overstocked with their goods, and there is what is called a “glut." Prices fall, wages are cut, production goes on. The oversupply is not decreased, for there is no outlet. Smail rivals •drop out of the business ruined, and then the large ones, to ,save themselves and quit playing “cutthroat” on each other, combine into an “association,” “union,” or “trust,” pool their capital, agree with each other to regulate production, pay a uniform rate of wages, and divide profits. All over the land we therefore see these protected industries leagued together into these monopoly combinations, dictating their own prices, paying labor what they choose, regulating production, and at the sometime lessening by forced stoppages and short time-work the wages of their workmen. Even but a partial list of these protected monopolies is appalling. First, we have the National Association of Timber Dealers, with headquarters at Chicago. They meet every year to determine the questions of the amount of lumber they will get out and the wages they will pay the coming year. Then they have a banquet and adjourn. Then comes the Seven-Railroad coal monopoly, which owns two-thirds of the anthracite coal lands. The representatives of the companies composing the great combination meet two or three times a year, agree with each other not to transport the coal of independent producers to market, arrange the time for shutting down or working on short time in order to regulate production, decide what wages they will pay until they next meet, fix prices, and then adjourn. Then we have the coke associations of Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Alabama, and Georgia. Then the friction match combination that was—you see the tax on matches was taken off, so the monopoly went to pieces, and the people now get cheap matches ■once more—then we have the Wall-Paper association, the Western Wrapping-Paper association, the American Paper association, and behind them the Old Rag and Old Paper association; then we have the Western Woodenware association, the India-Rubber association, the CrackerBakers’ association, the Stove-Dealers’ association, the Sugar association, the Salt monopoly, the Western Starch association, the Nail Manufacturers’ association, tho Barbed-Wire combination, the Western Pig-Iron association, the Empire Iron company, the Central Tack Manufacturers’ Association of Boston, the American Window-Glass Manufacturers’ association, and the American Association of Flint and Lime Glass Manufacturers, the Patent-Medicine association, the Flax and Hemp Spinners and Growers’ association, the Mutual Association of Carriage Hardware Manufacturers, the School Book Publishers’ Association, and last, but not least, the National Burial Case Association—all of them protected “infants,” supposed, under our present blessed tariff, to be encouraging industry and multiplying manufactures, but all of

them, under cover of that very tariff, combining with each other to limit and restrict manufacturing by working on short time, so as to keep up the prices agreed upon in secret meeting, and sometimes even paying, out ot the profits guaranteed by protection, one or another, in the combination,' for shutting down entirely. The Vulcan steel mill in St. Louis was paid $400,000 per annum by the thirty-million-dollar steel monopoly to stand idle. Eour wall-paper manufacturers in the Wall-paper Association have been receiving $20,000 a year for the last five or six years for standing idle, and to-day some of the West Virginia salt works are paid by the salt| combination for lying idle. Now, whom do these protected industries benefit beyond their immediate owners? Is it the great body of the people? Plainly, no. The great body of the people are all those, first, who are engaged in agriculture, comprising one-half of all the labor of the country, and, next, they are our carpenters, our masons' our blacksmiths, our bricklayers, our plasterers, and every man outside these protected industries who is working—whether in manual or mental toil —to support himself or his family. They outnumber their protected brethren nineteen to one, and whenever they spend the wages of their labor for any article produced by these combinations they give on the average under our tariff—averaging last year 45 per cent. —just 45 cents out of every dollar of their earnings to support, it is supposed, their protected brethren, but really to' enrich these protected monopolies. The slave of the South was a slave because all his earnings were subject to protection and seizure by another. He was 100 per cent, a slave because all his earnings were taken from him. Why, then, under the present protective tariff, does not the farmer and every other man who pays an average of 45 per cent, tax on his lumber, window-glass, salt, rice, sugar, woolen clothing, earthenware and china, tools, machinery, kitchen utensils, etc., only lack 55 per cent, of being just as much a slave as the colored man was in the South before the war?

Do these protected associations benefit their workingmen? Do they pay them better wages than other laborers get? No, they pay them less —just as little as they can get off with, and in some instances not enough to keep soul and body together. Manhood labor in the Pennsylvania anthracite coal mines got last year an average of 79 cents a day, and the bituminous coal miner got an a. erage of 64 cents a day. The tariff of 75 cents a ton on coal is supposed to be for the benefit of the miner, as “protection against the pauper labor of Europe.” Does he get it? Why, the “pauper” miner of Scotland gets four shillings—that is $1 —a day for his work. The tariff a benefit to the workingman! Ah, no. It is only a benefit*to protected capital by enabling it to enter into combinations to control both production and wages, to squeeze the public with one hand, and with the other to grind labor into abject slavery. Do the employes in any of these protected monopolies ever get an inerease of wages without a labor union or a strike? Never. In many cases the strike is brought on purposely by the employer by a cut in wages, and when the workmen strike against the cut, they finally have to yield in the end, because of the disadvantage in which the tariff puts them. For, with a large stock on hand, the manufacturer feels easy, because he is safe from outside competition, and he knows that it will take a long time before there is such a scarcity in the market as to make prices rise, and cause foreign goods to be brought in. In some States there are laws making it a penal offense for workingmen to even combine against these protected monopolies. Has it ever yet been thought of to make it a penal offense for our monopolists to combine against the workingman ? Protection is always for the employer, not for the employe. When he can not get the wages, which his employer tells him at election time the high tariff is going to (but never does) give him, and he strikes, his place is filled with a cheap Hungarian or Italian imported by contract, duty free. Talk about the disinterestedness of the protectionist and his love for the workingman! After the burning of Chicago, when Senator Logan introduced a special bill in Congress to allow her to import every sort of building material free of duty—such as glass, iron, nails, paints, oils, and lumber —who murmured against the boon ? Why the protected glass men, the iron men, tbe paint men, the oil men; and. the protected lumber barons of Michigan and Wisconsin chartered a train of Pullman palace cars and went down to Washington, pleaded with the Committee of Ways and Means, and got lumber stricken Off the list, and so Chicago got free trade and cheap materials in everything but lumber for rebuilding the city after the fire. The lumbermen couldn’t see it. They wanted their pound of flesh. They knew on whiqh side the tariff on lumber had buttered their bread. There were, according to the last census, 1,268 men in the State of Michigan employed in the salt industry, in the most disagreeable work in the world, breathing the steam from the salt-vats all day long with scarcely any clothing on. Their average wages was $1.37 a day, and the profits of the salt manufacturers each day upon each man employed were $1.84, and still the protectionist’s heart bleeds for the poor laboring man—at election times. When the yellow fever ravaged the South in 1878 and the poor were dying daily by thousands, who ran the price of quinine, the great specific in that dread disease, up to $8 an ounce—more than six times its retail price now ? The three great quinine firms of Philadelphia, New York, and Boston. The tariff had given them a monopoly of the business, and they saw their chance. The heads of these three firms are millionaires to-day, and one of them, a twenty-millionaire, is the richest man in,Philadelphia, all made out of the groans and sighs and agony of the sick and the dying; and still protection’s heart is ever bleeding for the people. These firms made so much out of the yellow-fever epidemic then that they were enabled to buy up all the cinehona forests in South America, and they control them to-day. When Congress put quinine on the free list in 1879 these three great firms loudly protested against the action of Congress in the name of “American labor" (as usual); that it would be “disastrous to their industry;” that they would have to discharge their men; that they would quit the business and move their establishments to Germany, where they could get cheaper labor. Their protest was like that usually made by nil such monopolies when their tariff favors are threatened to be taken away—mere so.und and fury—for these firms never discharged a single man that the public knows of, and they are as flourishing to-day as ever. Indeed, "it can be historically demonstrated that no protective duty was ever laid in the United States from the beginning of the government to this hour except at the instance and under the pressure of the very men who expected thereby to get artificial prices for their wares at the cost of their countrymen.” President Garfield admitted that the individuals and delegations who came before the Committee on Ways and Means while he was a member of it came in the basest selfishness, without a thought or care but for the extra price of their own products. The interests of labor are the last thing protectionists think about. It is not a question of labor at all; it is a question of capital always. Protect Workingmen by protecting capital! There never was a more abominable principle brought out of perdition ! Protect workingmen by protecting the manufacturer! There never was such an insane delusion!

The truth is, protection never concedes to labor its just wages, and without a struggle it never will. With some of these gigantic monopolies labor is already driven to the wall and the poor laborer is compelled to put wife and children to work to earn bread enough for the family. A year or two ago I saw three thousand little children from 6 to 15 years of age working in the coal breakers of Luzerne County, and I have seen women, naked to the waist and barefooted, wheeling cool into the coke ovens of Connellsville to help husband or brother to earn the pittance necessary to keep the family. Is this the labor of protection, so beautifully gictured by a recent presidential candidate in is letter of acceptance, as “earning enough to live in comfort, educating his children, and putting by a competency for old age?” No wonder, that under such a system honest industry is throttled and that the difference between the very rich and the very poor is becoming more and more marked. No wonder that where we had but ten millionaires in 1860 we now have a thousand. No wonder that our foams along the lake shore are paying to-day 86.50 of tax to $1 that they paid in 1860. No wonder that rents are twice as heavy, clothing twice as dear, and the necessaries of life generally 25 per cent, higher now than then. In the days of Rome the Government raised its revenues by selling the privilege of collecting them to the highest bidder. He remunerated himself in turn by wringing from the people their last coin and by selling those who could not ]>uy into the service of the rich, 'rhe tax-farmer then invariably acquired a vast fortune. Our Government, with like wisdom, grants a tariff, or tax privilege, to our protectionists, out of which the Government gets annually about 8180,000,000, and the protectionist beneficiaries take from the people 8600,000,000 to $800,000,000. The protected monopolist invariably becomes a millionaire, and the workman becomes his slave, or one

of the great army of tramps. That is tbe grand result. What a transparent game of robbery and swindle it is! First, the tariff, the foundation ol the whole business, then the killing off of small rivals by a combination of the big concerns, then higher prices by "regulating" production through stoppages or short-time work, and then squeezing of the people—both the unprotected nineteen twentieths who have to pay for the fun and the protected one-twentieth out of whose hand the robber protection, with his monopoly brood, filches back a part of tbe scanty dole of wages which he paid them for being the unwitting instruments of the conspiracy. How these monopolists must enjoy each other’s company when I they meet in annual convention, and banquet to ! fix prices for another year. Occasionally they I fall out in the game of grab, and then the people i get the benefit of low prices, but this does not occur often. It was Adam Smith who said, in 1776: “People of the same trade hardly meet together even for merriment and diversion, I but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.” President Gowan pointed out to a committee of Congress a year or two ago that "every pound of rope we buy for our home, for our vessels, or for our mines is bought at a price fixed by a committee of the rope manufacturers of the United States. Every keg of nails, every paper of tacks, ■ all our screws and wrenches and hinges, the boiler-flues for our locomotives, are never bought except at a price fixed by the representatives of the mills that manufacture them. Iron beums for our houses or our bridges can be had only at the prices agreed upon by a combination of those who produce them. Fire-brick, gas-pipe, terracotta pipe for drainage, every keg of powder we buy to blast with, are bought under the same combination of prices. Every pane of glass is bought the same way. White lead, galvanized sheet-iron, hose, and belting, and files are bought and sold at rates fixed by the protected combinations." The stove we warm ourselves by in the long winter evenings is a combination stove; the cool we burn in it is a combination coal; the oil in the lamp is a combination oil; and even the very match we light the lamp with, but for the abolition of the tax on matches, would be a combination match — all sold to us at priees fixed in secret meeting. The very school-book we buy for our children is sold to us at a price agreed upon by a combination of the nineteen leading book firms of the country. This spirit of monopoly has penetrated every industry of daily life. The milk brought every morning to our door, the ice in the refrigerator, the fish on the table, the meat on the platter, are all sold to us at prices fixed by an agreement among the dealers. We eat, we live by the favor of monopoly, and when we die we are clothed in a “protected” shroud, bought at a fixed price, sewed by thread taxed 78 per cent, for the benefit of a combination, and then we are borne to our last resting-place by a combination-priced hearse, in a combination-priced coffin, lowered into the grave with a combination-priced rope, and finally have erected over us to perpetuate our memory a combination-priced stone. Combine .to die! This is the spirit of the times. “The little coke-burner of Connellsville worksjor stops work, the coal-dealer raises his prices or lowers them as the master of the pool directs. The lords of monopoly have the power of decreeing scarcity to-day and famine to-morrow. They can not stop the brook that runs the mill, but they can chain the wheel; they cun not hide the mine, but they cun close the shaft three days in every week. To keep up fat dividends they declare war against plenty. On all that keeps him alive the workman must pay them their prices, while they lock him out of the mill in which his labor can be made to feteh the price of life.” Mr. Lincoln once heard a noise in the next room. He looked in and found Tad and Bob scuffling. “What’s the matter, boys?” “It’s Tad,” replied Bob; “he’s trying to get my knife.” “Oh, let him have it, Bob,” said Mr. Lincoln, “just to keep him quiet.” “No," said Bob; “it’s my knife, and I need it to keep me quiet,” The people whose earnings have been taken away these many years by protection are beginning to feel like Bob. They want all they earn to keep them quiet, and they will have it, sooner or later. We have free speech, free thought, and the world has proposed under both. Our fathers fought for free soil and we are now fighting for free trade. Give us that and the whole fabric of robbery, corruption, and plunder will tumble to pieces. Repeal the legislation by which war prices are kept up and our labor enslaved. Replace it by legislation which shall call for no more nor no less revenue than the actual necessities of the Government demand. Let taxation bear equally on all classes ; let it be levied on what men own, not on what they consume ; on luxuries, not oh necessaries; and let those who own much pay much, and let those who own little pay little. Then shall wealth represent the fruit of honest industry, and not the gains stolen from the just earnings of hardy toil. H. C. M. Erie, Pa.