Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 50, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 December 1893 — Page 1 Advertisements Column 3 [ADVERTISEMENT]

The exact reason why some of the large steel wor i s east of the Alleghenies will close on the first of the year was given some t u ree or four weeks ago by Freuenck Wood, second vice president of the Pennsylvania Steel company los cated at Steelton, Pa. “Previous to the past year,” he says, “we were inla position to compete most favorably with the steel manufacturers of the country.— Just at present we are not, though the fault is not our own. It is all due to the discovery of doposits of good steel-making ore in Michigan on the banks of Lake Superior. The ore comes from what are known as the Mesaba districts, and can be very cheaply mined by steam shovels and loaded by them directly on the cars.

“Owing to the freight charges we can not, of course, compete with the mills west of tli9 Alleghenies in purchasing tbis ore. Nor c-n the foreign ore from Cuba and the Mediterranean, which we use en tirely, paying the duty of 75 cents a ton, compete with the western ore.

“The result is that our steel bus siness has gone to pot, and will continue so if the western output holds out and + he tariff is not taken

off raw material. ‘ li. the tariff is *aken off raw material, we shall be able to com-

pete on even terms with the other steel-making companies If it is not, I do not thinx there is a single company east of the Allegheny mountains that w’ll be able to continue operations in steel-making. “As I understand the tariff, it is intended to encourage the industry and not to shut up manufacs tories. When this is the result, it has outlived its usefulness. With ‘he tariff off raw materials, eastern and western plants would be on t n equal basis.”

Mr. Sove.eign, who succeeded T. V. PowderJy a 3 cnief officer of the Knights of Labor, is an out-and-out free trader. “I believe,” he says, “in no makeshifts or partial reductions of tariff taxation. The so-called protec.ion to American labor is a delusion. Labor is not protected. Invested capital receiyes a bonus in the form of protection, and it is then optional with the capitalists, to give a share of the bonus to labor m the form of increased wages. But this option is seldom, if ever, exercised.”

If there ever wasatime when a high tariff should benefit the laboring classes, that time is now. IE the employes of protected corporat'ons have received their shat a f tariff bout ties, there should be no suffering. Inlfar the most cases the poorest paid labor in this country is that employed by protected concerns. Thb laboring classes are forced by law to help Drotect caps ital, and they in return are compelled to accept fo* their labor whatever protected capitalists see fit. to give. The protection proposition “that the* government take care of the rich, and the rich wifi take car a of the poor,” don’t operate in the interest of the wageearner .

“It is notable,” says the Laporte Argus, “how soon people ferget about hard times when -v change comes. Every winter there is more or less talk about hard times. It is worse this winter than usual, because of the financial panic last summer and fall, but there always more or less factories and mills that shut down work bt cause of slack orders or over stocks, and almo. t invariably the force of workmen is reduced in numbers. Everybody who stops to think knows this to be tiue tor it is so Lorn year to year. There is not one-tenth the suffering now that there was after the panic of 1873, and that lasted for five years.”

Once the Wilson tariff bill becomes operative free raw material will enable our manufactories to employ more labor, vastly increase their outputs and not only supply our own but the markets of the world. There will then be no lack of orders, no over stock, no overtaxation. The people's money,