Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 51, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 January 1893 — Men Are on the Free List. [ARTICLE]

Men Are on the Free List.

One da'im 'may as well be disposed of at once. Protectionists claim that the tariff protects American labor against foreign competion. Does it? There Is no tariff on laborers. There is absolute free trade in labor—the one thing that the manufacturer has to buy, and the one thing the laborer has to sell. But the manufacturer suys we keep out foreign work. Well, when does the foreign laborer most interfere with your Job —when he Is thousands of miles away, working by hand or with poor machinery, producing goods that have to be transported thousands of miles before they come into our markets? or when he has come here as an immigrant and stands ready to work right by your side on the .very machine you work with, to make the very goods you are making? When does he most interfere with your job?—when he stays a foreigner thousands of miles off? or when he comes here and bids against you? How does it help the employer most-to have him stay at home 1b Europe? or to have him here underbidding you? So, when your employers tell you that the tariff is to protect your labor, you know better. You did not make those laws, they did; and they left them in such shape that they could buy your labor as cheaply as possible. Their attitude, when frank, Is summed in the speech of the gentleman who has been their leader in Congress, -Hon. Wm. D. Kelley, of Pennsylvania, who, in the House of Representatives, when reminded that there was no tariff on labor, said: “Yes, men are on the free list. They cost us not even freight. . . . We promote free trade In men, and it is the only free trade I am prepared to promote.”—Hon. John DeWiU Warner.