Jasper County Democrat, Volume 5, Number 25, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 September 1902 — POLITICS OF THE DAY [ARTICLE]

POLITICS OF THE DAY

Coat of Living. While the Indiana Republican literary bureau is engaged in telling the people of Indiana that they are paying less for their supplies than they did ten or twelve years ago and that they are really better off than they were then, It is Interesting to note that Carpoll D. Wright reports that the demand of the eoal miners of Pennsylvania for an Increase of wages is based on the claim that the prices of the necessaries of life have so advanced that they cannot live on their old wages. This same point is urged in a recent public letter by William Cammack, a Pennsylvania miner, who says he has “been on a strike, together with other miners, for nearly three months, striking for an increase of wages in keeping with the price we have to pay for the necessaries of life and for recognition of our union, which seems to be the only hope that labor (outside of voting right) has in these days of this ‘imaginary prosperity’ and ‘government by injunction.’ ” And furthermore Mr. Cammack specifies the increased prices that he has to pay, as follows: "In 1902 I have to pay 80 cents per gallon for oil that I use in the mines, but the cans hold only three quarts. Everything else Is in proportion, itemized as follows for the years 1898 and 1902:

Prices In Prices In 1898. 1902. Rank oil, per gallon $ .58 $ .80 Powder, per keg 1.20 2.25 Flour, per barrel 3.50 7.00 Ba con, per pound 08 1-3 .16 2-3 Beef, per pound 08 1-3 .18 Granulated sugar, per lb.. .06 1-2 .10 Tea, per pound 40 .70 Canned tomatoes, per doz. .60 1.50 Corn, per bushel 1.00 1.00 Rice, per pound 05 .08 1-3 Breakfast food, per box.. .10 .16 Rolled oats, per box 08 1-3 .12 1-2 Currants, per pound 06 1-4 .12 1-2 Raisins, per pound 081-3 .12 1-2 Dried apples, per pound.. .04 .121-2 Meal, per bushel 50 1.00 Lard, per pound 07 1-2 .13 Dried beans, per pound.. .03 .05 Condensed milk, dbz. cans 1.00 1.50 Coarse salt, per pound ... .01 .04 1-4 Toilet soap, per box 10 .25 Cheese, per pound 08 1-3 .20 Butter, per pound 16 2-3 .35 Vinegar, per gallon 20 .40 Potatoes, per bushel 75 1.40 Kerosene oil, per gallon.. .10 .20 Laundry soap, dos. bars. .25 .50 Ham, per pound 12 .18 These are commodities that the miner has to have to live, and it will be noted that many of them have advanced 100 per cent or more. Coal has gone sailing skyward, but the men who dug it get fio advantage from that. Mr. Cammack further says:

“These are the prices that the average workingman pays now and what they had to pay in 1898. I trust that this statement may be of service in opening the eyes of the laboring men of this country, so that they may vote against the trusts and the party that makes it possible for them to rob the laboring men by charging them these outrageous prices, and if they make any complaint enjoin them from walking on the earth.” It is not surprising that with this sort of sentiment developing among the miners Senators Platt and Quay have made an effort to Induce the mine operators to arbitrate the questions involved. The time has come when the common sense of the people revolts against the exactions of the divinely constituted trustees of .property who operate the trusts.

Vain Republican Ruling. An angry resentment of the popular demand for tariff revision is the most noticeable characteristic of Republican comment thereon, making plain the truth that Republican unwillingness to act against the monopolies enjoyed by the trusts unfits that party for service to the people. The leading organs of Republicanism stigmatize as “tariff-smashers” all those who are in favor of a revision of the tariff. The only variant of this favorite term in which they indulge is the second-choice epithet, “businesskillers,” which they employ hopefully as tending to deter voters from a conclusive Insistence upon tariff revision. In their desperation they are preaching the doctrine that the maintenance of monopoly is necessary to the prosperity of the masses. The millions of Americans now bearing the tax burden of the Dingley tariff have passed that stage where they could be fooled by such tactics. They do not see “prosperity" in the fact that they are compelled to pay higher prices for the products of the American trusts than arc paid by Europeans for the name products. They fall to feel “prosperous" merely because the cost of living In this country has been tremendously Increased in order that the food trusts should make exorbitant profits and pay millions In dividends to a few multi-millionaire monopolists. They can only see and feel that the Dingley tariff is a mighty good thing for the trusts and a mighty bad thing for the people. Nor Is there any popular apprehension of American trade being injured by a revision of the tariff. American merchants and manufacturers are underselling their competitors In all the markets of the world. They are more than equal to holding their own in American markets. They can, without the slightest danger of loss, do without the “protection" of a tariff whose duties are necessarily paid by American consumers. They are very sure that business will be healthier when a healthy competition is possible and when individual enterprise and the

conduct of smaller business concerns stand some show of profit There is no prosperity for the people in the fact that a few hundred trust magnates, out of a population of nearly 80,900,000 souls, make fortunes every year and proceed to spend the bulk of those fortunes in foreign lands. That form of “tariff-smashing” which would revise the Dingley tariff to the wholesome basis of a tariff for revenue only is heartily favored by American public sentiment. This sentiment Is so strong, Indeed, as to make tariff reform the leading issue of the day. Republican organs can no longer frighten American voters by calling them “tariff-smashers” and “businesskillers.” The only business to be killed is the monopoly business, and the only tariff to be smashed is the unjust Dingley tariff that has created and maintained the monopoly business at the sore cost of the people.—St. Louis Republic.

Roosevelt' Humiliation. It appears that all of President Roosevelt’s explanations and Secretary Shaw’s explanations that the administration is not vindictively hostile toward trusts have not been sufficient to satisfy the trust magnates who control the Republican party, and they have forced the most prominent candidate for the Presidential nomination in 1901 to declare unequivocally against any serious effort to get rid of trust domination. In his speech at Fitchburg, Mass., he made his confession as follows: “As sensible men we must decide that it is a great deal better that some people prosper too much than that no one should prosper enough. So that the man who advocates destroying the trusts by measures which would paralyze the Industries of the country is at best a quack and at worst an enemy to the republic.” This is plain, in the light of recent events. The remedy that “would paralyze the industries of the country” is understood by everybody to be the reduction of the tariff on’ trust-made products. The only effort made by President Roosevelt in that line was in the bill for Cuban reciprocity. The objections made to the Cuban reciprocity bill by the tobacco and sugar trusts were exactly the objections that President Roosevelt now makes to remedial legislation by removing tariff donations to trusts. The trusts have forced him to join them in the condemnation of his own policy. And the most humiliating part of this humiliation is that the condemnation is based on falsehood. The idea that the reduction of the tariff on tobacco and sugar in favor of Cuba would have destroyed either of those industries was an utter absurdity, and every sensible man in the land knew it. It is equally absurd to say that the removal of the tariff on trust-made goods which the trusts are now exporting to foreign countries and seUlng In competition with the world would ruin their industries. And yet President Roosevelt Is driven to assume that position and make that false plea to the American people—lndianapolis Sentinel.

Examples of Tariff Robbery. Picture this little scene to yourself: An American housewife goes into a store and buys a pound of borax, paying 8 cents for it. As she tunfe away with her packhge another housewife comes in, buys two pounds of borax and is charged 5 cents for her purchase. “Why do you charge me 8 cents for one pound of borax and let that other woman have two pounds for 5 cents?" the American housewife demands. “Oh," answers the storekeeper, blandly, “she's English, you know..” How long would that storekeeper, openly discriminating in favor of the foreign and against the native customer, lie able to do business anywhere in the United States? Yet this transaction in borax illustrates perfectly what the trusts are doing on a colossal scale in the home and foreign markets. The foreigner gets his American meat chopper for 75 cents, the American is charged $1.04. The American pays sll .for a fruit press, the foreigner gets it for $8.82. A hundred pounds of wire nails cost the American $2.05, the foreigner $1.30. A piano for which the American pays $375 is exported at S3OO. And here are the figures on sewing machines; No. 1 home price, S2O, foreign price $13.25; No. 4 or 9, home price $25, foreign price $17.48. Typewriters which sell in the United States for SIOO are sold abroad from SSO to SOS. Barbed wire for fencing costs the American $2.90 the 100 pounds, the foreigner $2.25. The home price for Wire rope is $9.70 the 100 faet, the export $3.12, or 211 per cent less;

Columns of the American could be filled with like extortions practiced upon the people under the protection of whose laws those trustr- have been built up. It is the tariff, which shelters the monopolies from competition, that enables them to charge what they please nt home while selling nt fair prices to the foreigner, for in other countries rivnls have to be mot in the markets. How long will the American people tolerate this robbery?—Chicago American.

Nothing Is so great an instance of ill-manners as flattery.—Swift.