Rensselaer Republican, Volume 23, Number 2, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 September 1890 — Self-Evident Propositions. [ARTICLE]

Self-Evident Propositions.

The Chicago Tribune is the one Republican paper which, more than all others, has opposed the genera) policy of protection during the past eight years and has been most liberally quoted by the Democratic and free-trade press to help their cause.' It has assailed the McKinley bill time and again, to the great delight of the Democratic press. Its readers will, therefore, be surprised and the majority of them, no doubt, pleased, to find an editorial in the issue of Sept. 1 entitled “Democratic Reciprocity,” and another the following morning entitled “Show the people Both Sides,” in which the advantages of the protective policy are presented with clearness

and force. In the first article the Tribune declares that if the Mills, or Democratic, policy of reciprocity, which is to throw our markets open to “the whole world,” were adopted the following would be the result: The American manufacturer, shielded at present by protection against the disvantages of paying more for labor, materials and

plant than his foreign rival, would have but one of two courses to pursue when protection was withdrawn—try’ to meet this foreign competition or go out of the business. If he did the he would throw hundreds of thousands of men on the labor market. Some of them could not find employment. Others, looking for it where this foreign competition was less keen, would force do’.vn necessarily the wages paid.in these branches. If the manufacturer, unwilling to throw away the capital invested in his plant, decided to .compete, the first thing he would have to do would be to cut dotvn by a half or a third the pay of bis men. They would object, but' it would be extremely illogical, for having voted for the Milts Democratic system, they ought to accept cheerfully its first fruits—freetrade wages.. This reduction of wages would not fall on mill and factory hands idone, but would

have to be carried out all along the line. ITom the finished product to the raw material. The men who mine coal, iron, lead and copper ores, and limestone, and who dig clay for bricks, would have to work for less, that the manufacturer might have their products for less. They would have to pay their share of the prices of competition. Nor will the reduction in wages stop here. They will equalize downward in other callings. The railway employes will have to drop to the’Enrojjeam level, for there cannot be at the same moment an American scale of ..wages for one body of employes and a"European scale for another. House servants will have to take h ss.' bo will, all salaried men, such as clerks and book-keepers, liuckmen, hackmen 1 , engineers, sinoke-nuisaiice-breeding stokers, stock-yards men, and the whole army of unclassified laborers, havw to c>>me down. ’ 7 ■ -

The natural atJ-d inevitable re-sults-of free trade could not be more clearly or concisely, stated sbfar as wage-earners are concerned. These are self-evident results. All that the Tribune’s ;stab?ment lacks is an extension of the application of the results’ of world-wide reciprocity to the farmer. Now he* ■sells-more than 90 pi r-cen-t-.of his pimiuclsto therAmeticw pfioplpj and chiefly to wa-ge-carners-. Taking perishable produets in considiTation, '4 - f.->.riner dr-wo s even a larger pait of his income from home eonsuiiiefs. They Tcmsume. twice as much in value as do wageearners in any Other country, ,be--waaseAheye&Tu an averagooDtwiee.as much. To open our markets to the world would result in the reduction of wages to the level of Hie worlds's wages, and in the closing of many of our industries. Those who would be compelled to take half the the present wages could only buy half as mucii.of the products of the farmer as they now displaced by the importation of the products of foreign laborers would have nothing with which to buy the farmers’ products, and ■would be compellled to seek to raise something which they could eat. This is tfiepait of the protection theory which appeals to the interests of every wage-earner and producer in the land, and it is plain it needs no arguemept to sustain it. If American wage-earners are to be put on p level with all the wage-earners of the world, they must accept the wages of the world. From that there is no escape.