Rensselaer Republican, Volume 26, Number 33, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 April 1894 — THAT “RETURNING PROSPERITY.” [ARTICLE]

THAT “RETURNING PROSPERITY.”

“IU is a sign of returning prosperity, according to> the Chicago Herald, that three r of thafive mills owned by the Illinois Steel 'Works are about to open, says the:* lnfer Ocean. It is a sign of returning prosperity that employment will be given, to 3,000 man where 0,000 were once employed. It is a sign of returning prosperity that the men employed as heaters, who earned $6.57 per day in 1892, when the Chicago Herald assured them that they were “starving workmen,” now will receive $4.34. We shall not emulate the dishonest folly of our contemporary by protesting that men who earn $4.34 a day are in danger of starving, but we will remind our wage earning friends that we assured them that when, acting on the Herald’s advice, they went in for "swiping the tariff” they were swiping a good slice off their own wages. Of course the stores can not sell so much to heaters who earn $4.34 a day as to those who earn $6.67. But the Herald speaks of the reduced rate as •‘satisfactory.” We have great sympathy with the class of workmen who, as unskilled laborers, earned $1.50 in 1892 and early in 1893, but who now will have to live on sl. The first sum insured a frugal living, the latter hints at privation where

the family is large. We have sympathy, also, with those who earned S 3 per day before they read and believed the specious theories of free traders, but who must be contented with $2 now that an approach to free trade is made. Three dollars a day means comfort, two means rigid economy. Still the Herald assures us that all this is “satisfactory.” We rejoice exceedingly in even a partial rehabilition of trade. We are glad that 3,000 men are rescued from idleness, though at reduced rates of pay. But we will not speak seriously of this amendment of condition as a of prosperity.” It is, at best, a mitigation of adversity. If the Wilson bill becomes law, we believe that it will be but a temporary mitigation, for every ton of importecTiron will be a tonless made in the United States. Prosperity will return with the return of a fixed policy of protection. Not till then. Meanwhile, we earnestly rejoice in the present mitigation of adversity.