Democratic Sentinel, Volume 14, Number 52, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 January 1891 — Hard on Manufacturers. [ARTICLE]

Hard on Manufacturers.

In discussing the mower and reaper trust, the Cincinnati Commercial Gazette , the leading high-tariff organ of Ohio, displays a very poor opinion of our business men. It says: “If business men would be less savagely ambitious, less grasping, less malevolent toward their neighbors, and tvould be satisfied with tiny-fair anil uecent earnings of their endeavors,” etc. This is a rather harsh opinion, but it is no more harsh than that expressed by Senator Plumb in his attack upon the McKinley bill. The Kansas Senator said: “Merchants go down; farmers fail everywhere. They do not expect to be exempt from chances of this kind. The manufacturer is the one person who, insists that he is never to fail so long as laws can be written and passed putting duties enough upon the articles which he manufactures to enable him to make a profit.” The Senator, in the same speech, quoted approvingly a business friend of liis from Chicago, who assured him that “tho American manufacturer does not manufacture anything he cannot make a certain and great profit on, and that he stands out of the way of the foreign manufacturer as to other articles on which he cannot make satisfactory profits.” Yet when Democratic opponents of our high-tariff system say things like these, they are denounced as “enemies of American industry” and as “serving European interests.”