Democratic Sentinel, Volume 12, Number 29, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 August 1888 — THE TATIEF AND DEBTS. [ARTICLE]

THE TATIEF AND DEBTS.

rciiiiagu Times.] The Times has received a short, letter from Indianapolis inclosing a printed card addressed to worki. -,n 6ii. The writer of the letter lgv; lhat the republican state cem- • • ittes c£ Indiana is sending out thousands of similar cards, lie also says that ‘the argument signed ‘Machinist’ * an the card inclosed seems unanswerable,” and he wants to know whether The Times can answer it. Following is the argument which seems to him unananswerable: say ‘that if free trade makes wpgc* lower those low- i or wages will buy jaist as much, as everything else will be lower in proportion.’ Granted that this statement is correct, how is it with what we owe? Now, I, like thousands of others, have a home partly paid for. lam owing upon it sl,10Q. My weekly dues to the building association are $8,60 p r week. At my present wages, $2 5 0 per day, I can spare this r>y close economy; but if, by means of free trade, my wages fall to £1.50, how can I live and make -those payments? It will be impossible and I will be compelled to lose my home and all I have paid upon it. There are hundreds and thousands of mechanics rod laboring men in the United folates in the same fix. Do they realize that when then vote for free trade they are throwing awsy all they have paid on their little homos and their homes too? Machinist,” It is sufficient answer to this to say that it has nothing whatever to do with any question now beto 3 the America 1 people. As a campaign document it raises a V e issue. No one is proposing free trade, or any sensible approach to it. If there was a political par*y in the country proposing free trade it would be pertinent to inquire as to the effect upon people who oxe money as well as upon other people. But there is uo such p ' y in the country, and therefore no such inquiry has anything to do with the issue now presented to the American people. There is a party which proposes to reduce certain taxes on imported goods. What it actually proposes to do is to be learned from the president’s message of last Deee end from the Mills bill.— There is nothing about either which, if carried into practical effect, would reduce a machinist’s wages, or any other man’s wages, from $2.50 to $1.50, or to $?, or to $2.49 per day. Should the Mills bill become a law it is safe to say that it would not have the effect to reduce the wages of any American mechanic 1 cent a day. But it would have the effect to give him cheaper and bet 4 ;y r . and so to enable him to save more with which to pay for his home. We have a tariff averaging 47 per cent, on dutiable articles. The president and his party propose to reduce the average to about 40 per cent. And this reduction the advocates of high tariff call free trade. If the average were 100 per cent and somebody should propose to reduce it to 75 per cent these same high-tariff men would call that free trade also, and insist that it would cut down wages 40 or 50 per cent, and ruin every workingman who owes anything on his home. A4O per cent tariff is a very long Way from free trade. Those who pretend to be baMling against free trade are making a false pretense. What they are really brttling against is to prevent such a reduction es taxes as would reduce not only what the workingman, irr common with others, has to pay for the support of government, but also what he has to contribute to increase the wealth of men who have already grown rich by the exercis i of the taxing power delegated to them by the government. These men resist the proposal to lower the taxes, not because the effect would be to reduce Wages, for it is to their interest that wages phould be lowr-r, but because the ■ If • * - ,

effect would be to reduce toeiiprog’s somewhat. What is called protection is al rays for the benefit cf those who pay wages -nd uevt:r for th 1 , benefit of who earn wages. The former are alwnyr. !ho beneficiaries of tariff -\- a ion aud the latter are always ;lie dupes and victims of the real ben eticirries. There •« ground for a suspicu' that the other of ihe above avgu ! mo.' sig ed “Machinist” is »pd : litical party maehinii i. mo not a I machinist of any other kln-U-Ther is ground tor tbs suspLion • that he is one of the kind *i litiiiv' | special business it is to make people believe that taxes enrich the men who pay thorn. Such .is he would probably not succeed so well if the bills for all the workingmen were made out to them in proper form thus: Goods $ 1.90 Tariff taxes thereon 47 Total $ 1.47