Jasper County Democrat, Volume 12, Number 99, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 March 1910 — A TARIFF ON DAYLIGHT [ARTICLE]

A TARIFF ON DAYLIGHT

Illuminating Industry Not Sufficiently Protected. CAPITAL FAVORS ITSELF. How Employment Might Bo Found For Millions. of People by a Consistent Application of Protectionist Principles Applied to People’s Needs. Since the protective principle Is such a good thing for our people, giving them plenty of wofk at high wages, It would seem that we ought to have more of it If that principle is true there is one industry at present unprotected which employs about 50,000 people, but which if it were properly protected in the manner hereafter suggested would easily find employment for five or six millions of our people. So that here exists an opportunity for courageous protectionists to earn the everlasting gratitude of the wage earners by consistently carrying out their policy as regards this one industry. The industry I refer to is the illuminating industry. Ido not speak of mental illumination, since that and protection do not go well together. I mean physical illumination, such as that afforded by gas and electricity. Reference to the statistical abstract of the United States for 1907 shows that the average number of wage earners engaged in the gas. illuminating and heating industry in 1905 was 30.566 and that the total wages paid to them was $17,057,917. If to these figures we add those for gas and lamp fixtures and gas machines and meters we should get a total of 41,381 employees receiving a total annual wage fund of $22,828,098. This works out to an average of $551.66 a head, by the way, which is not so bad for a nonprotected Industry and compares favorably with the wages paid in some protected industries, such as cotton.

But I am arguing for protection to this Industry, and my reasons are as follows: Sunlight is on the free list, and so is sun heat They come to us from the east, the very place where all our pauper made foreign goods come from. They flood this fair land regularly year in and year out for one-half of the twenty-four hours with the withering blight of free sunbeams In utter defiance of our protectionist policy and to the great injury of the artificial light industry. How long are we going to allow this condition to last? Supposing England and Germany manufactured this light and not the sun. Would we not shut these nations out? And shall we not also shut out the sun? Cheap goods made by pauper labor are wicked enough in all conscience, but goods for nothing at all,, and such useful goods, too—how can any nation stand that? Indeed, the wonder is that our whole trade has not been ruined long ago. Of course free traders will tell us that cheap light is a benefit to everybody. But did they not say the same of cheap meat, cheap socks and cheap blankets, and did not our people scout the idea? It is the old story again—the perverse stupidity of free traders that prevents them from seeing that It is not cheapness the nation wants, but work—work at American wages regardless of anything else. The light thus dumped upon us by the sun could be made just as well in our own country In our gas and electrical lighting works and would, as above stated, give employment to several millions of our people at American wages, of course. Thus we could be independent not only of other nations, but even of old Sol himself, which, in addition to the economic advantage gained, would be another glorious feather in Uncle Sam’s cap. The way to go about it Is simple. We cannot put an ad valorem duty of 100 per cent on sunlight, nor can we prevent the earth from turning on its axis once in twenty-four hours—not for the present, at least But we can pass a law compelling all householders in the land to keep shutters on their windows In the daytime, and we can draw a thick awning over all towns so as to shut out all daylight. Then there would be a boom in the gas and electric light business the like of which no man ever saw since God first said. “Let there be light” The American match industry, too, would receive a tremendous Impulse, and I have said nothing about the manufacture of awnings, which, instead of employing 3,500 men, as at present would be employing 3,500,000 under the new conditions.

What a boon all this would be for American labor! Of course some will say it would be difficult for men to carry on their multifarious tasks under artificial light But that’s just our point Difficulty is what we want for the more difficulty there is the more work, and have we not already said, that work and everything that makes work is what we are after and that such things as ease and cheapness are things the protectionist never considers—except when he is paying his help, of course. The outline here given is Imperfect I admit but the idea is there, and the reader can develop it at his pleasure. If ever there was a clear case for protection this is it Remember that the light we get from the sun Is doing us as much harm as if it was made in Germany and shipped over here. Remember also that no foreign competition ever ruined American trade one-tenth as much as this solar competition has ruined our illuminating industry. Protectionists, where is your consistency?

THOMAR SCANLON.