Rensselaer Republican, Volume 23, Number 29, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 March 1891 — STAND BY THE HOME MARKET. [ARTICLE]

STAND BY THE HOME MARKET.

Cheapness is the bait with which free trade attorneys seek to allure the great industrial classes to aid in destroying the home market by smothering it with importations from abroad. Between this time and the next national election voters will have opportunity lor investigating this proposition and all that its fulfillment implies. No question . can arise in connection with the election of law makers in the proper decision of which our people have so much at stake. Everything that we eat as well as all that we wear is the product of labor. In providing many of these labor constitutes ninety per cent of their cost, while the average will be in excess of three-

fourths. Keeping this fact in ] mind, the man who depends upon his lal>or for his living needs no college professor to inform him that wages would have to standthe greater share of any reduction in cost to comsumers. There can be nd escape from this alternative. * - Whv~ can European countriesproduce same-lines of goods cheaper than they can be made in Unit-, ed States? Not because they can procure tin* necssary raw materials required in their manufacture so much chcnpefy"bat, because labor can bo had there for one-quarter to two-thirds the price paid here in the same lines. It requires cheap labor to produce rhoap goods in Europe, and cheaper labor will be necssary in this- country to producecheaper goods here, except as --this end may lie secured through improvements in machinery equally open to both countries. It is from -this point of view that the issue between Protection and free foreign -trade assumes an especial interest for the millions of industrial voters to whom free trade attorneys are now so earnestly appealing. If the prices of edible products art- to lit- reduced,

the remunation of the farmer must be lessened. On the other hand, if clothing and household goods are-to lie suppled cheaper, the work involved in their preparation must be done by somebody who will be content with lower wages than art-now paid, if those now working in mines and shop t s and factoriesin the United Stales will not consent to this arrangement there will soon be little work for them to do, for free trade will place many lines of goods upon the shelves of our dealers for less money than the same goods can now be produced for under the scales of wages paid in all the leading industries by United States employers. All of which is well known to the free trade attorneys, who are careful to keep the fact to themselves, while drumming up votes for their favorite policy. Meantime those who are their proposed victims had best not close their eyes to. facts patent to all who choose to look for them.