Democratic Sentinel, Volume 13, Number 33, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 September 1889 — Protecting Home Interests. [ARTICLE]

Protecting Home Interests.

The Town Board of Rensselaer has passed an ordinance requiring transient concerns like the “Chicago Bankrupt Store” to pay a li* cense of $ 0 a week, $25 per month or 8100 for six months. This is practieal common sense and a step which no town board should be afraid to take on account of sentimental free trade talk. A town has a right to legislate m the int erests of its own citizens, and bankrupt stores, junk shops and peddlers, unless restricted, a”e prejudicial to the interests of the town. They unsettle trade, discourage investments and impair the reputation of the loc?l market. They are here a brief season and are gone again, leaving the regular trade, upon which the community depends the year round, to pick up what they have left and to make the best of the dull season. The mercantile interests of a town subject to these spasmodic raids without restraint will naturally deteriorate, foi the merchants who have invested their all in one place, paying their taxes there and

contributing to every enterprise for the general good, cannot be expected to adopt the metk ids of these transient concerns and at the same time build up a permanent trade. It is impossible, and a town thus afflicted will soon find its trade reduced “transient” basis. Therefore it is entirely proper that defensive measures should be taken against such a state of things. The cry of ‘ sell where you please and buy where you please” sounds well on paper, but let a town be thrown open to peddlers and merchandise fakirs, and it will see the mos' desirable class of its trade pleasing to buy elsewh re. The Herald is m favor of a wise piotective tariff in local as well as na-

tional affairs and believes that a little discrimination in favor of the home dealer as against the tramp is strictly in order.—Mon>* ticello Herald. W e arejopposed to the theory of protection as advocated by the Herald and indorsed by the Republican. It may ba very correct and proper to declare that “a town has a right to legislate in the interest i of its own citizens,” but that depends altogether upon the char acter of the legislation. If it is designed to secure “the greatest to the greatest number” it is all right, but if it be for the sole lenefit of the few to the detriment of the man - the enrichment of the few at the expense of he many; if it be on the theory of radical national tariff legislation—to create a few millionaires at the expense and to the impoverishment of millions of consumers, jt is all wrong. W e entertain a high rega*d-fori our merchants, and make no war on them. We believe they can >uy as low, and sell as cheap as any others. They—particularly

those f them who have insisted loud and long for tariff reform — should not ask a republican board, even it has the power, whish we which we are satisfied it has not, to enforce an ordinan. e so excessively oppressive as that said to have been passed, in their interest, and in opposition to th e interests of the great mass residing in the town and in the country for miles adjacent who do their trading at this point. At the next meeting of the Boai d the question will possibly be raised as to the adoption of the ordinance. With a full under standing of the measure, and all the proceedings connected with it, we desire to have the members of the Board on record in thia matter. An attempt wa* recently made to have an ordinance similar to the one in question passed by the Town Board of Monticello, but it was very sensibly kicked higher than Gilroy’s kite. The trust on high prices blown up by the low one price cash stere.