Rensselaer Republican, Volume 16, Number 26, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 March 1884 — American Prosperity. [ARTICLE]

American Prosperity.

Tlic Facts as They Exist, for tbc Cartfslcan Statesmen to Encoi^iter. Philadelphia Telotrnun. The Carlisle school of statesmen, who propose to legislate for this fifty million?of people, are going to legislate uptm a hew plan. They confess that what they design to dais only m the way of experiment ; that they may be wholly wrong about if. but, nevertheless, they 'are going to giye it a triaf. Mr. Carlisle acknowledges that, he had heard of “that women in Belgium who was found making nails at a few cents a day.” That woman—working in freetrade Belgium, in lately f: 00-tiade Germany, in present free-trade Hoi land, in free-trade England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales—might bo multiplied by millions, and still there would be other millions of her,. She would be found in that same Belgium, and in Holland, Germany, and Austria also, harnessed with horses, or in the Netherlands with dogs, at the cart, or at the plow: she would be found in the coal mines of Belgium and England and Waler, digging cr hauling coal. In short, in every free-trade country of Europe she would be found doing the SfcroDg man’s work —hewing the wood, drawing the wafer, by the labor of her hands and by the sweat of lier brow earning her bread, which did shp not do she would-starve as surely as she was born, because in those beneficent free-trade countries net ouly he, but she also, born to lowly estate, must live at the hardest, coarsest work, or cease to live. Hot only in Belgium will that poor wom’au be found making nails for a few cents a day, bat making nails for as little in England, 1 a- leas in Holland drawing tlio boat along the -fowpath of the canal, not only doing - The work that mules do here! hut often* When tired and .exhausted., receiving the mule's StCkS aml er.wos. It is only in those line old -frog-trade countries, whose market is the whole world, who _ do not luive to confine: their sales t<> their own people', that woman inns! work or starve—must work as men. do, br.<*anse the wages paid to a man are so lew as to make it impossible for him to support little more than his; own individual lite. It is not only woman, whose place should be On her own hearth, who works for the pittance : U is-also the little- child thr ;st into tic mid, or pit a-, ages wdieu-tkw children of Vrncvlcan wurkirgmeu' hrstill.ou tlr irmotli-t's knees, • As a class and rule," the American woman works only’ in in r ov.n household/ She i-a -- a ho-.it. wish !'•>! only a hoard llopr, but -carpets ci.e/lng the. beards. It i» well niuiisUe.l, lighted, heated, often handsomely decorated. Better than that, it ofteue -t reply eiit-> the reward of her husband’s industry ; and her thrift: it .is/prope*. tv. and it i.-j TfteTrs. Within it they and ikeir-ei ild- j reirluml Gea.ii, wholesome, someihitw . more than decent—beautiful liv*.-s. 'the woman in Belgium, Engl ami, Scotland: or Wales who mares naiis or digs in tie mines, or in Holland is harm ssed with b’orse or dogs to cut or plow, or dragsdlic heaTy boat through tlio canal la* the rope about her wit t iered i).-e -sis. is housed worse than our vvor-kingniiiU> dogs. Kol 'a house’at : -I: in a hut".; often wkkeither -a.bam-earth or Irani stone jioor; illy lighted, n-:a heated a: aii ih airy sanitary sense, the who)-, tviuily Lud died into one .room:Aw day li Vi G-ulu t o ilVii (ItYoUw- whttrtgsorno H ViHg-. i —le raid his brood vi itxit to • know whattlie-workirgmaihs iiio in the | towns of merry England . is, * let them read Prof.:.Huxleys late a.l- : r- >s on the homes of Loudo:; workingmen: audit they want to know w-hat it is in the; c-Tntry, then let thv.m : read Canon; Ki’igslcy's r.nem of ••Ti-.e Poacher’s WiiC.” *■ Ail these soe-a' nyd economic evils 1 under wiilch that woman and that man. ■ rot-only of Belgium.- but of 'free-trade Europe. suffer;. iuavuol be wholly due t v free-trade. * Bat a- lensf fr. e-trade, ami all the world fora mark r, havo.no relieved Jfiiih or -her from the awlu poverty wi-iea is beyond any ynw ri’f J -scrip-don. So-p out or those free.trtidd countries •in'':* p--ot<-,.:ti re BraiiCi—-t-idy. i: iidly protective,' but niAr .pirn-' t ..ciivc in .greater uegrife than aw. other—au4 we yviii see a- nation |-r >% • pi tons and happy. , j YV c will see vvuqien working. but not os elsewhere. The/ work chlpfiy in their homes, rearing liicir chinirgn, j though not same exteu: as in the 1 United Sta. eg. where w< niaiik aiA ; is uhiefiy home work and, ui h ico,!rare executions, womanly work. Here j Vo have unexampled . pi'esq eriij, a fixed, enduring prosperity, and here no j hate lu o’tectiou.'iTMer Carlisle pleases to add, a restricted market. Is i: worth white, as the "CarHsifes arc so uucertwin abont the mnilt-y'-tu-experi-ment with the policy that has made that BAgium woman a Worker, at the

auvil, & digger in the black, foul depths of the mine, with her little children working with her-. She is in England also, in Holland also, everywhere, in fact, where free trade is. Here shels safely, comfortably, often luxuriously, bestowed; her chief duty to make her home attractive, to tit her children for the highest pursuits. Free trade may not destroy our industries or throw out of employment millions of workingmen, or reduce: their wages to the standard ol the Belgian woman’s, but it may; and as it may, kit wise to play tho fool with it any more than with a dynamite magazine.