Democratic Sentinel, Volume 15, Number 18, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 May 1891 — THE STATE OF PROTECTION. [ARTICLE]

THE STATE OF PROTECTION.

The Indianapolis News (Republican) thus remarks on the condition of affairs “in the bounty-fed, tariff-coddled State of Pennsylvania”: It is in the bounty-fed, tariff-coddled State of Pennsylvania, the State whose chief industries' have been built up by taxation on all the people, whose many millionaires are the product of forced contributions from the consumers of the country, that we see on the heels of anew tariff bill which out-wars the war tariff, more evic ions thau in Ireland; people sitting by the road-side, hundreds of families a week tamed out of the miserable houses that have sheltered them. On the one side they are met with the muz. zlets of the rifles of the hired assassins whom tariff-fattened millionaires oall to their aid; |on the other they are met by hordes of foreign settle brought in by these same tariff-fattened millionaires, to pluck in their “pluck-me” stores and starve on half time until they, too reach the point of rebellion. In tee great Western city of this State of protection a starving mob takes possession of the ruins oaused bv a fire.— The word has spread that there are food and goods in the ruins, and hundreds of men, women and children fonght like animals over a carcass, grasping the bricks still hot from'the fire and flinging them aside to get a can of lard or bit of ham. For two hours this misery-ground mob worked like maggots in the mins for what they could find to eat or wear Meantime, nnder the coidon of rifles, the houseless poor of the coke regions are driven steadily out to add to the starving thousands, while nnder the guard of rifles fresh victims are marched in, “We are emptying our houses and filiing them again,” said H. O. Frick Friday. “If the men won’t work we h ve no use for them.” That is the formula. When the imported droves have been bled in company houses for rent, and plundered by company “plnek-me” stores at prices sometimes 100 per cent, higher than the market; laid off in idleness when tee coke kings and coal barons want to pinch the the country with seant supply, so as to raise prices; when driven to desperation, and refusing to work longer nnder such conditions, the wretched workers ask something better: “We.empty our houses and fill them again; if the men won't work we have no use for them. ” The MoKinley tariff, while imposing prohibitive and extortionate duties on European products, leaves to the monopolists absolute free trade in labor and attracts hordes from the crowded countries of Europe to come here, beat down the price of labor and take the bread out of the mouths of those that are here, leaving them to sit shelterless by the roadside, as the mine regions of the great protecte i State show to day, or to fight like wolves for food amid the fire ruins of its cities. The McKinley law was int nded to protect monopoly, and it does so. It was meant to make the riqh richer and the poor poorer, and it does so. It was me <nt to add to the money support of the party which oassed it, and it is doing so.