Rensselaer Republican, Volume 21, Number 51, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 August 1889 — HOW PROTECTION BENEFITS THE WORKINGMAN. [ARTICLE]

HOW PROTECTION BENEFITS THE WORKINGMAN.

The advocates of free trade are prolific in devices for securing the support of voters to their scheme of abolishing all barriers to unrestricted commerce between this and other nations, however diversely circumstanced they may be. A favorite device is the endeavor to create dissatisfaction and foster antagonisms on the part of workingmen by the insistauee that Protection inures to the exclusive benefit of the capitalist—that the laborer would be far better off under free trade. In furtherance of this every disagreement between employers and employes as to the amount of wages or the hours of labor, whether the product is on the dutiable list or not, is paraded as an out-growth of the protective policy. Nothing could be more misleading; nothing more unfortunate for the workingman than to «n‘ve heed to such teachings, j,\b between the capitalist and the i'aborer, the latter is most in need *>f protection against foreign competition. Under free trade the could manage to live, and live w^U—by merchandising, transportation, or. if not attracted towards these, he could draw upon his capital for expenses, and remain idle. Business of any kind is with him largely a matter of convenience or preference—in no wise a necessity. If not suited here, he has the means of taking himself and family to some other flonntrv, where workingmen are too poor to shrike, and stolidly acceptsuch wages as they can get HBotNehtoK ’O r .

is left him between work and want; hence, of all men, he should be the most jealous of those “insidious wiles of foreign influence” which seek to have the necessities and comforts of the people of the United States supplied through foreign labor. The more work performed in this country, the better the workingman’s chances for steady employment and fair wages. Whatever the labor involved in producing any article required in this country that is performed abroad, by just so much is he deprived of the opportunity for earning wages which to him are a necessity. Free trade preachers know full well that on the plain issue of preference for the higher standard of wages and better faculties, for work which Protection insures, and the alternative of getting work by underbidding foreign competition offered by free trade, they have no chance for securing the vote of any intelligent workingman. Hence their persistence in befogging tte question with sounding platitudes and specious - ' appeals to the prejudices of voters —by quoting irrelevant proverbs instead of the scales of wages under the British and American policies.