Rensselaer Republican, Volume 21, Number 53, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 September 1889 — DEMOCRATIC DEMAGOGUES. [ARTICLE]

DEMOCRATIC DEMAGOGUES.

According to tl\e free trade advocates all the strikes and labor troubles in this country are due to the protective tariff. But how do they account for the troubles and strikes in free-trade England? Like that even now in progress among the dock laborers of Lon-don-one of the largest strikes ever known.

An item going the rounds of the press as local advice seems to be universally indorsed by free traders, tariff protectionists and all other shades ]of political opinion It says: “iWer send a dollar away from home when the article that the dollar will purchase can be obtained at home. Money is our financial blood. Its circulation keeps the business body alive. Bleed that body by sending money away away and soon trade will languish. Always trade at home, as it sustains your own fireside and finds its way out again*” No# is it not a perfectly clear case that the free trader who subscribes to this doctrine for his immediate locality gives himself utteily away on the main issue between free trade and tariff protection? Let the free trader who reads this fresco his hat with it ; \ J

The U. S. revenue vessels continue to capture the piratical Canadian sealers in the waters of Alaska, and the Canadians are tearing their hair in rage over the seizures. There is no danger of serious trouble with England over the matter, however, for England knows that if the pirates are allowed to continue the depredations the fur seals will soon be exterminated, as they have been by the Bame methods in the southern oceans, and England has even a larger pecuniary interest in preserving the seals than has this country; from the fact that all the seal skins are taken in the raw state to England, where they are dressed. The English people make from five to ten dollars off from every seal taken in Alaska, k y authorized methods, while the lericans who take them make less than two dollars.

The apj.' en d e d extract in regard to the of W. L. Scott, the great democrat® coal baron, and President Cleveland’s right hand -inan, is from the Joliet, 111., liepublic and Sun, a paper published near the Illinois coal fields, in -which Scott is so heavily interested, and where tefuses to employ any miners, at any price, unless they will first abandon all connection with labor organizations, of eveiy kind, and thus surrender every effective means of defense which they. now have against any future oppressions he may choose to inflict. Much of a blow has been made by democratic papers over the alleged offer by fecott of a two or three cent higher rate per ton in his mines than are

paid in some other mines in the Illinois coal fields. Bow much meat there is in that cocoannt will be seen by reading the extract, abofe alluded to, which here follows': . 1 “The offer of Scott, the Spring Valley coal and iron magnate is a very slick newspaper proposition. To the outside world Mr. Scott ; would pose as a martyr, a magnanimous sort of a fellow, but to those who know the mining situation, his proposition is niggardly, When the mines were hi operation Spring Valley paid 90 cents to Streator’e 80 cents, the difference being that in Spring Valley the miners must do feet of “brushing” or excavating above the coal while at Streator when a six or eight foot vein is being worked miners had to use a step ladder to do the roofing. Scott’s offer of ; 75 cents is misleading about 35 cents a ton. The proposition of the Streator miners to accept seventy-two and one half cents per ton until October first, would bring Scott’s scale up to at least eightyseven and a half cents. It is of such flimsy material as this, that the Chicago Herald and its boon companion Mr. Lawler, would make political capital. Magnanimous Scott, (of Spring Valley-)”