Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 20, Number 11, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 October 1898 — Tim Knew He Was Hit. [ARTICLE]

Tim Knew He Was Hit.

Timothy McCormick is a Stave Cutter and He Telia a Story that is in Itself an'Eloquent Protection Speech— No Man Can Read it and Not See the Point, for it Shows Just How Free Trade Works. A Delphi Journal representative attended the Flora fair Friday. He met a great many people there; farmers, business men and everyday laboring .men. Everybody was happy, everybody was contented, everybody was prosperous, everybody seem to look forward with hope. There was a young man on the ground by the name of Timorhy McCormick. Timothy does not olaim to be a student, nor a scholar, nor philosopher, nor anything else but a plain, every-day laboring man. Up to two years ago he was a Democrat, and as far back as he could look along the line of his ancestry he could see nothing but Democrats. But Timothy is a Democrat, no longer. Timothy is a Republican. It happened in this way: Timothy McCormick cuts staves. When the Wilson bill went into effect, Timothy was working for James Lunney in his stave factory at Tilman, making $3 for eight hours work. But soon after that bill began to operate Timothy ceased working. There was no demand for his labor, or at least so small a demand that he could not make enough money to pay his board. He went from point to point and occassionally got a day’s work. In the oourse of his travels he reached Delphi and secured two days’ work and then was informed that he was at liberty to degprt. He asked Mr. Lunney why it was that there was no demand for stave cutters. Mr Lunney informed him that the Wilson bill had taken the tariff off staves and that the staves that were then being sold in Indiana, Ohio, Illinois, New York and the northwestern states, were made in Canada by labor that was from thirtythree to fifty per cent, cheaper than the labor in the United States. To fortify this statement, Mr. Lunney took down the Coopers’ Journal and read Timothy an article setting forth the above facts.

But Timothy was a Democrat and he did not believe Mr, Lunney and he made up his mind that ho I would go to Minneapolis, where he had a friend who was foreman in one of the largest stave factories in the United States and where he felt he could secure employment. He accordingly took passage on the bumpers of the cars, sleepiug occasionally in empty box cars, and finally landed in Minneapolis, sought his friend and struck him for a job. The friend told Timothy that there was no work for him in Minneapolis. Timothy asked why. For an answer his friend asked him to stop to the back door. He opened the door and poipted to sixty-three cars | loaded with staves that stood in ! the yard and asked him if he saw them, Timothy said he saw them. “Those sixty-three cars are londed with staves that came from Caui nda,” replied the foreman. “The Wilson bill took the tariff off staves, they now come in free; we can have them mado cheaper in Canada than in the United States and that is the reason we buy them there. You will remember you Democrats are in favor of buying where you can buy the cheapest? And then the foreman looked Timothy in the eye und winked, and asked him how he liked tho dose of political medicine he had been taking. The demonstration was too much i for Timothy McCormick. He had ' bean up against it long enough and

hard enough to realize the truth, and he straightway ceased to be a Democrat and became a Republican, and two years ago when Democracy gave up the cry of "free trade” and came along with the cry of “free silver,” Timothy McCormick was not one of those who was ensnared. He had tried free trade and did not like it. And be did not propose to be fooled by free silver. “I would not vote the Demooratio ticket, representing as it does, free trade, bad money, hard times and an utter absence of work, if the dearest friend and closest relative on earth was on the ticket,” he said last Friday. He said more. He said that since the Dingley bill had gone into effect and a tariff had been placed upon staves, Canada no longer flooded the states with her cheaply made staves. The factories in United States have once more started up, American citizens are seouring employment, and with the money they earn are buying the comforts and necessaries of life for their families, And when we make staves the farmers can sell their timber and men who work in staves factories can buy the products of the farm, and there is activity and life in more channels than one. Is there any wonder that Timothy McCormick ceased to be a Democrat and beoome a Republican ? His plain story is as strong a speech in favor of Republican protection as the Journal ever printed.