Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 26, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 July 1892 — M’KINLEY AND MARS. [ARTICLE]

M’KINLEY AND MARS.

THE MAJOR WILL ASK THE MARSARIANS QUESTIONS. .Enormous Profits or tho Sugar Trust— Precarious Labor Situation— Bitter Reciprocity Prult—The Tariff Tax on Sugar Is Downright Robbery. Mars to Be Interviewed. Apropos of the announcement by Edison that it may be possible to converse with the inhabitants of Mars, when that planet in August approaches to w.thin about 40,100,1)00 miles of our humble sphere, Major McKinley has prepared a set of questions which he hopes tho inhabitants of Mars will kindly answer in time' for campaign purposes here this fall. McKinley’s absolute faith in “protection.” with its reciprocity safety valves, as the promoter of N civilization and the forerunner of the millennium, coupled with the fact that the Marsarians, because of the age of their planet and the engineering feats apparently accomplished there, are supposed to have evoluted past our present stage of development and to have settled certain scientific, moral and political questions that are now tormenting our little immature minds, has led him to attempt the novel plan of going to Mars for campaign material. The following are some of the questions now ready to Are at the unsuspecting Marsarian statesmen: 1. 1 am Major McKinley, author of the McKinley tariff bill—of course, you have protective tariffs thero? Yes. 1 supposed so, I wish to ask a few questions in regard to protective tariffs. 2. Are those big marks which cross the surface of your planet at right angles at intervals of every few hundred miles really canals to facilitate communication and commerce, as our free trade astronomers suppose, or are they immense tariff walls to obstruct trade and foster home industries? 3. Do you make your tariff walls strong, high and absolutely prohibitive, or do you leave reciprocity holes in the back door for the benefit of foreigners, who will open similar “oat-holes” in their walls? 4. Do you put a high duty on wool to make it dear, and on tinned plate to make it cheap? 5. Do you take duties off of sugar because they are taxes upon the consumer and leave them on steel rails because they are taxes upon the foreigners? 6. I suppose each division on your planet lets in a few foreicn goods—just to give foreigners an opportunity to pay its taxes. Can all countries get rich in this way? What ones can? 7. Do you ever admit that the consumer pays any taxes at all? 8. Do you encourage manufactures ! by putting a duty on raw material. 2. Are your manufacturers grateful i tor the protection they get, or do you | have to “fry the fat” out of them every ] campaign? 10. Have you a “Fat Fryer’s Guide”— that is, a list of protected millionaire . manufacturers like our New York Trib- ; une has published to aid in raising cam- I paign funds? 11. Do you not find that competition will lower prices faster when restricted to small countries than when spread over the entire planet? 12. Do your protected manufacturers ever form combines or trusts to prevent competition, restrict production, raise prices, lower -wages and bring your whole protected system into disrepute. 13. Do these trusts, then, begin to sell goods twenty-five or fifty per cent, cheaper to foreigners than in your “protected home markets,” depending upon the tariff to prevent home consumers from reimporting these goods? 14. Do you ever aid manufacturers in ! selling cheaper to foreigners by paying drawback duties—i. e., refunding duties paid on raw materials, when such materials are being exported in a manufactured form? 15. Can you keep the farmers in line by giving them all of the bogus protection and shoddy reciprocity they want, while their farms are declining in value and are mortgaged to death? 16. Do you succeed in getting the people to believe that you are making nearly all of your own tinned plate and employing thousands of American workmen, when you are really only making one per cent, of all, anil this mostly frofn imported plates and by imported woAmen? 17. Do you keep men on the free list and succeed in making laborers believe i that they are protected by a tariff on what they consume? 18. Why is it that labor in unprotected industries always gets better wages and has steadier employment than labor in protected industries? 19. Here in the United States we have protection against the pauper labor of j Europe; but, strange to say, in Europe : the low-wage countries all have protec- : tion against the high-wage country— England. Have you got a good argument to explain away this apparent inconsistency? Do you have the same trouble on Mars, or do the facts there fit the protective theeory? 20. Is cheapness a curse? 21. How do you make it appear consistent to encourage inventions to make things cheap and protection to avoid the curse of cheapness? 22. Wouldn’t it be better to destroy machinery, railroads and ships in order to prevent cheapness and to provide more employment for labor? 23. Is it possible that trade is beneficial—that is, to both parties? 24. What is your remedy to prevent 1 wage-reductions, strikes and lockouts in protected industries in the midst of a Presidential campaign? 25. Have you ever increased the num- ! ber of your millionaires more than 10,000 per cent, in any thirty years of protection, as we have done? Getting there, aren’t we? 26. Do you allow any but millionaires in your Cabinet and Senate? 27. Do the: poor there really make laws or only obey them? Some of these questions may seem trivial or even silly to your advanced minds, but pleasedo not neglect to reply promptly on that account, for we want to enlighten the free-traders here before November, and some of them don’t yet understand first principles such as protection taxes the foreigner.