Democratic Sentinel, Volume 12, Number 36, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 September 1888 — CARNECIE'S FEMALE SLAVES. [ARTICLE]

CARNECIE'S FEMALE SLAVES.

A STORY FOR MRS. J. ELLEF FOSTER. Half-Nakul Women Toiling at tiie Protested Furnaces of Pennsyl-vania-Imported Uod«rCon» tr..ct to Supplant American Laborers—Harrowing Sights. J» w [Chas. E. Wheeler in Toledo Bee] Is it at all necessary to go to Ringland to find women, working at heavy labor, such as forging, etc. ? Six years ai o I walked a distance of six miles in one of the most b°au tiful districts of Am rtca. Had the artist making the electro-plates at republican headquarters been with me he would have hesitated cefore sending out such plates as did service in last evening’s Blade. This was what he would have seen; Women working at furnaces who to all appearances were unsexed. They were Hungaria s working along Ide of their husbands and countrymen, and lost to every idea of propriety or rudest sensitiveness. They were clothed with a short kilt and a pair of boots, and so far as the eye co’d judge, 'hat was all. From waist up they were as naked as the cold truth. In all the habits ut daily life, with men they were as men. This charming little picture our artist would have beheld it as I beheld it, in western Pennsylvania, about sixty miles south of Pittsburgh, between Scotdale and Mt. Pleasant. The furnacec were coke ovens; the workingmen contract laborers who had crowded out Americans. The owners of rhe furnaces are Frick & Co., protectionists all, who can weep profusely at the threatening dangers to American workingmen in a slight reduction of the tariff

Perhaps to make the picture complete the artist nould wish to present the portraits of the owners. After Mr. Frick’s portrait, whose? If the galleries of Pittsburgh have not his photograph Mr. Blaine has. Frick & Go. means Mr. Frick a d Andrew Carnegie. Ask the first man you meet from the smoky city that was, if this be not a fact. [E. G’. Ashley, in Toledo Bee.] 1 am glad that Mr Wheeler has given in last ’ight’s Bee the facts he privately related some time ago T. e picture is a refreshing one for those who talk about labor getting the benefit of Women nearly naked working beside men nearly brutalized in the scorehing furnacee of Andrew Carnegie, while chat gentleman is riding with the Bader of the republican party to Clunv castle. The fact is that “protection” not only lowers, but greatly lowers, the rate of wages. If not, how comes it that wages in the non “protected” occupations, such as the building trades and railroading, are so much higner than wages in iron making and mining? Since 1880 there has been a general rise in in the non-i ro tected occupations of about 15 per cent., but in the ‘protected" ocoupa« ti ns there has been ageneialfall, as John Jarrett himself admits, of 20 per cent. The truth is that the high tariff puts the men in the power of the masters. The masters can and do frequently go through with this little process. First they manufacture a heavy surplus, then, ell ging that the market is weak, they unite in de iaring that the wages must be reduced. The men probably strike. Then, as production ceases, prices go up and the manufacturers make more money than ever, inasmuch as the mountainshigh tariff—more than twice as high as that of aoy other country except Brazil— dops not allow the competition of foreign goods. In two or three months the men get starved out and go back to work at reduced wages, and stay until another cut is de ermined upon. The manufacturers would no* be sofready to shut down were it not for the high tariff which secures.them the market. I imagine how Carnegie must roll around and laugh at the idea that a hign tariff makes him pay higher wages.

Now, Mr. Editor. I propose to offer you a companion picture of Mr. Wheeler’s and I 3hallenge republican denial. While the manufacturers have been reducing the wages ot “protected” labor within the last twenty years until the general level is below hat vs the awful “free trade” year of 1860, the manufacturers have been gathering in the money ot the people of the United S ates as follows. Pig iron, average annual production, 4.500,000 tons; in twenty years, 92,000,000 tons . Average extra price paid by the people because competition was restricted to Penn ylvania

is at least $lO per ton; total tribute of people to Pennsylvania, S9OO 000.0(0. There is not a 010 >m made, a railroad built, a house erected that does not cost from 15 to 30 per cent more on account of the tariff If oir republican friends want another picture I can supply it; c teel rails production in twenty years in U 8 in tons, abo t 15,000,000 Extra price paid first by railroads end next by their shippers will av>» erage, per ton S2O Total tribute to steel rail makers $300,000,000 The mass ct the republican party is no doubt honest in its belief that somehow the tariff “fosteis” industries without anybody paying for the fostering But those who get the benefit of th° unjust taxation of thei. fellow citizers are not honest in the reasons they give for “protection "