Democratic Sentinel, Volume 13, Number 39, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 October 1889 — MINES AND FACTORIES. How They Are Being Ruined By the Tariff. [ARTICLE]

MINES AND FACTORIES. How They Are Being Ruined By the Tariff.

But leaving the farming industries at this point and for the present, what is to be said in, regard to the mines, the lac-' tories, the workshops, the wage-workers? In view of the distressful and appalling con dition of the wage-workers of tl e United States at this time, the man who would say that the tariff was a protection to them would claim that smallpox induced health,and piracy as a profession, promoted Christianity. Wherein lies their protection? They are

not protected in their contracts by any tariff law; they are not protected in their employments or in their wages. The employer is left to deal with them with all the superior power and commanding force which wealth gives over poverty and dependence.— vVere. the wage-workers of Illinois, who have been destitute and turbulent, as tute people will always be, protected during the last six or twelve months? Was the poor woman at Braidwood, whose twin babies died at her breast for want of nourishment, she herself in a starving condition, protected as a wage worker’s wife? Were the wage-workers of that haughty steel baron, Carnegie, with his income of millions a year, protected when he announced to them a reduction of their wages of 15 per cent, hen they entered their protest

against this arbitrary and oppressive action of their employer he hired a hundred of Pinkerton s men, armed to the teeth, and brought upon the ground as his assistant arbitrators with his workmen. This was his mode of arbitration. He gave his helpless and dependent people, I had amost said slaves, the alternative of returning to their work at reduced wages, or leaving their homes in the vain pursuit of work elsewhere, or to be shot down if they offered any resistance. He oppressed and ground the faces of the poor and prepared himself to shed innocent blood if his avarice was resisted. Protection to labor! The slavery of the South before the war was a greater protection to labor than the tariff laws of the present day. The negro at least was secure in a home, and a sufficient amount of healthy food. The interest of his master and his mistress made it so, if it came from no higher or worthier motive In sick© ess he and his little brood were cared for. w ho cares for the wage-worker, the miner or factory hand, when health fails, or when his labor is no longer needed? He is cast out, and if it needsis allowed to die of want In many of its aspects that slavery which the war wiped out in blood, and which I rejoice to feel is gone never to return, was merciful compared to the sla very which now exists among millions of white men and women. here during the slavery in the cotton fields and the sugar plantations was ever to be seen such a spectacle as has been presented in the county of Clay in our own state? Between five and six thousand men,women and children have eaten the bread of friendly charity. You may say that they could have obtained work at reduced wages. Perhaps so, but that very fact discloses their helplessness in the clutches of the monopolists who employ them, f the employer can dictate a reduction of wages ot 15, |25 or 50 per cent., that concedes the vvhole question; the wage-worker is not protected at all.

There is a much longer parallel that might be run b’tween the slavery of the olien South and the slavery established by the power of wealth that prevails in the ranks of labor’ throughout the country at this time, but I forbear for the present This is a theme that can and will be resumed again and again. This fight is on and to it I dedicate the remainder of my life. I know what a contest against the money power is. I have engaged in such conflicts before. fought the battles of the silver dollar; i have fought the battles of tin greenback, and 1 know the abuse and brutal denunciations that follow.— Thecause of honest labor now demands that every (honest man in the i epul Lc join in battle against the robbery of labor for the still furl her enrichment ot the already rich, this question will never down. The principle of taking from one iiian what is his own to benefit ano her man to whom it does not belong involves and strikes down the eternal and ever active natural rights of man. i would say to the advocates of the high protective tariff; forbear; you are on dangerous ground. Such an issue as this has bathed glorious battle-fieids with blood. God so guided the wisdom of our fathers, however, as to give us a redress in a peaceful mode. Ihe ballot is your sure and only necessary weapon. The diffusion of light and knowl edge is all that is needed. To the farmer, to the wage worker, ’ would say, how long, oh, Lord, how long until you see and act as becomes free men 2 For myself I can say in the language of Sir Robert Peel after he had triumphed in the repeal of the odious protective tariff corn laws of England, ‘I

shall leave a name execrated by every monopolist who from less honorable motives clamors for nrotection because it conduces to his own individual benefit, but ii may be that 1 ihall leave a name s anetimes remembered with expressions of c-ood will in the abodes of those whose lot it is to toil and earn their daily bread by the sweat of their brow,when they shall recruit their exhausted 'strength with abundant and untaxed food, the sweeter because it is no longer leavened oy the sense of i nj ustice.” The British statesman rejoiced in cheapening or/ 1 <»1 the great staple articles of food. Our cause of reform is broader in its scope. It embraces the relief of labor in the production of everything necessary to the comfcrtable existence of the civilized races of mankind. The eternal r ght belongs to us. We cannot fail. And how glorious it will be for the proud commonwealth of Indiana to be found at the head of the giant column, now moving all over the land for the emancipation of the present and o e future generations from he heavy yoke, the galling servitude of iniquitous and criminal taxation.

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