Rensselaer Republican, Volume 21, Number 3, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 September 1888 — POINTS ON THE ISSUE. [ARTICLE]

POINTS ON THE ISSUE.

AN ENGLISH WORKINGMAN ON FREE - TRADE “BENEFITS." j ' * Democratic Kipresslons That Explain Their rurpoM—Some Industries the Mills Rill Will Affect —A Comparative .Statement of tlie 'Tariff* Now and in Former Tears —Paragraphs That -Hit Center. Mr. 11. J. PeUi/er, of Lpndon, secretary of the Workman's association for the defense of British industry, will shortly visit this country apd deliver a series of addresses to workingmen ujxm the tariff under the auspices of tile Home Market club of Boston. The following answers to tariff questions which he gave in a recent Better will therefore have a special interest to American workmen: "First. Do I consider the free trade policy of England a'tienefit or an injury to the workingmen of England? (I presume by England you include Great Britain and Ireland.) I thjnk the best answer 1, can give to this is to say that many and many q time, and not so very long singe, either, I have lain in bed all day on a Sunday while my only shirt and pair of stockings were being washed ready for Monday morning simply because the monoy that should have gone for clothes had gone to pay for printing pamphjets I hafj written, denouncing this curse of free trade, This was, of course, liefore we had an association, hut 1, inink it will, show, pretty clearly what my views are on this question. “Second—Does, the lower cost of the necessaries of life make np for the loss in wages occasioned by the absence of a protective tariff? Sitting where I am sitting now as I write this letter, looking out on to the market square of Galway, I see the best answer that could possibly lie given to this question. There is a great car-load of Irishmen and Irishwomen (willing and < able to work) just come in from Connemara,* a place where the necessaries of life are lower in price thap they are in any part of the United Kingdom. They a£e on their way to the American steamer, going to America, where the necessaries of life are very much liigher in price. And why are they going? -Simply became low prices have brought their wages down to 25 cents a day, prin some cases even leas, and no employment to be gotj even at that Rite. “Tlii! population of Ireland (and England also) is flying away from its native country, like Lot fled from the cities of the plain, leaving free trade, wjiert* everything is cheap, apd going to protection, where everything is dear, “Third—Do I think wages would be higher in England under a system of protection to Borne industries? I don't think anything alxiut it; I am quite sifre of it. We don't want a better proof of this than the fact that during the late Franco-German war, and ftp: about three years after, we had ip this country what amounted to protection. England was relieved for the time from the flood of rlp-ap manufactured articles and other surplus productions of the continent. (lie effect of this being to send wages up at least 30 per cent., in some trades far higher; not only so, but every .one had constant employment, that lieing the time of our great prosperity. But just as the French and Germans settled down to work and sent their goods over to England, so our trade has gone steadily down, and, of course, our wages have gone down with it. The home trade of ttreat Britain and Ireland is in gxxxl times about six times as great and north six times ps much as our ex|iort trade, and yet oar socalled political economists are doing here what the free trade party want to do in America, that is, let the home trade (that they have got) go for the sake of a foreign trade (which they expect to get.)"—New York Press.