Rensselaer Republican, Volume 21, Number 8, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 October 1888 — An Insult to Labor. [ARTICLE]

An Insult to Labor.

Washington, Oct. 19.—1 f there is not one act above another that should cause the laboring men of the country to put their feet down upon the neck of President Cleveland’s administration, it is the one which Senator Teller, of Colorado, exposed yesterday and to-day in the Senate. He nulled back the hypocritical veil from the face of some of the inside workings of the administration, and showed that, under Indian Commissioner Atkins, contracts were given for hundreds and hundreds of road and farm wagons to Cherry, Marrow & Co., for four hundred of their wagons, made by penitruiiary vvirvivtßf anti ititviitivu lor anti used in the Indian Territory. There were subsequently other large orders given by government officers for these wagons. Whether the President made a pocket veto of the bill making it a crime to use for the government convictmade goods, with an eye to these very contracts, is conjectural. This is what Senator Teller wants investigated. But the infamous part of the business, in connection with the laboring man, is the fact that these contracts were made in competition with others who employed union labor, the Studebaker wagon works, of South Bend, Ind., for instance. The lessees of the Tennessee convicts pay about 25 cents a day per man for their work, while the Studebakers pay from $1.59 to 73 a day. The law provides that the contract shall be let “to the lowest and best bidder.” President Cleveland has by -his various acts, including his pocket veto of the bill mentioned, said that the convict bid was not only the lowest, but the best.