Democratic Sentinel, Volume 15, Number 16, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 May 1891 — THE DESIRE FOR REFORM [ARTICLE]

THE DESIRE FOR REFORM

EX-GOV. MORTON ON THE FEELING IN THE WEST. TfrrtfT Reform Still in tlie Fiont—Why the Farmers Are Not Deceivedby Talk About Pauper Labor—Work of the Reform Club and How to Sustain It. Ex-Governor J. Sterling Morton, of Nebraska, has recently spent several -weeks in New York, making his headquarters while there at the Reform Club. It will be remembered that it was this ■club which took so active a part in the •Congress elections last fall in lowa, Michigan, Illinois and other Western States. Governor Morgan showed while in New York a deep interest in the tariff reform propaganda which the club has undertaken. Being himself a non-resi-dent member of the club, he was delighted to find that all the money paid to the club in the way of annual dues by out-of-town members goes directly into the work for tariff reform. To a member of the club ho said on this point: “Evsry earnest tariff reformer in the West ought to bo a member of this club. Every man who can pay #lO a year will have the satisfaction of knowing that every penny of this goes towards supplying the sinews of .war in this fight against an iniquitous tariff system. There are a great many men in the West who are able and willing to pay-this sum, and would gladly do so if their attention were only called to the matter.

“The protectionists have the advantage over us in one important respect. They can ‘fry the fat’ to an almost unlimited extent out of those who have large financial interests in protection. Now with us the case is different. On our side the financial interest in abolishing protection is not so great with any one individual. There are many manufacturers who are interested to the extent of thousands of dollars a year in keeping up protection. The opponents of protection have a financial interest in abolishing the system; but as with them the interest of each man is less than on the protection side there is less disposition to contribute money to carry on your educational campaign. “Now it seems to me that there ought •to be many men who are willing to join this club and give #lO a year to help you to keep up this agitation. The legitimate expenses of your work of organizing meetings at distant points and sending out speakers to thorn and also in supplying tariff-reform matter to a large number of newspapers must be very great. The country should come to your help. ” Gov. Morton was asked whether the desire for tariff reform was growing in Nebraska. “Yes,” he answered, “the yearning for commercial freedom is becoming more and more general and more and more intense among the farmers of the Northwest.

“They find that protection compels them to buy of American manufacturers ’heir farm implements at artificially enhanced prices. The Oliver steel plow, made at South Bend, Ind., sells for less in Canada than in the United States, and so very often —do Diston’s saws. And while the Northwestern farmer buys in a protected he sells in a free trade market His meats and breadstuffs are fixed, as to prices, by the Liverpool and Loudon markets. He sells against all creation, and he buys where all creation is shut out from competing with the pampered protectees of the McKinley tariff. “The farmer sees that the profits of capital are the leavings of wages. After operatives are paid off the dividend fund is left, a? is also a sinking fund, betterments and other increments, for the manufacturer. The farmer knows that under protection millionaires, in manufacturing ventures, have spawned and throve, like skippers in a cheese, all over the Middle and Eastern States. And it follows logically that the great fortunes —made with greater celerity in America than elsewhere on earth—like Carnegie's, must arise from very large leavings of wages for division among the capitalists , “B’or this reason farmers, mechanics, and laborers generally are beginning to discriminate between high wages and high cost of labor. It is plain to them that a skilled laborer in the United States, who gets in steel-rail manufacturing $4 a day, may leave the finished steel rail with less cost of labor m it than a less-skilled, less-alert artisan in England leaves in the steel rail made there by labor costing only #2 a day. “Denominational wages are ono thing, and the cost of labor is another; the former may bo very high and the latter very low. Some farm hands are cheaper at #25 a month than others at #ls. Ihe cost of labor in grain grown by the former is less than that cost in grain grown by the latter sort of labor. One good farm hand will cultivate well forty forty acres of corn in Nebraska, and get from that area 2,000 bushels. But a lazy, inefficient, slovenly man will half tili the same acreage and produce only 1,000 bushels. If the former is paid #2O and the latter #ls a month, the cost of labor in tho 1,000 bushels is much greater than in the 2,000. The Alliance people are now thinking upon this economic question, and will not easily be bamboozled by the McKinley assumptions and assertions about ‘protecting the wage-earners. ’ “Alliance men are among themselves absolute free traders. They sell to the merchants who will pay highest for farm products, and then they buy of those who will give the most commodities for those products, direct or in cash. The farmer and his merchant trade with each other just as long as they each find it advantageous to do so. The moment either finds the exchange unprofitable, trade between them stops—unprofitable commerce always dies. All legitimate exchanges are mutually advantageous, both between persons and between people—nations. “The United States had a growing trade with Europe. Her merchantmen flecked every sea. Transoceanic commerce grew apace. It must have been profitable, or it would have perished of its own unprofitableness. But it grew and grew untii the Morill tariff—and now the McKinley tariff —was enacted to kill it —to, abolish that which was mutually profitable—to eradicate the commercial advantages which —under comparative freedom —were mutual, natural, just an i righteous. ”