Show MKIXLEYS PARADOX JVIr McKiXLCT avowed in his latest speech that the American people scorn cheap coats if they must be had by a reduction of the tariff but that sugar an article of prime necessity neces-sity to every household should ccme untaxed un-taxed to the American people Mr MCKIXLET evidently fancies that sugar is more of a necessity than coats but even if that were true does it foUow that the American people should be permitted per-mitted only to get bare necessities 1 It would be difficult to show that a man should be content with 3 a day when he could earn S3 If the government did not interfere There must be no talk thatpeople should be content with being permitted to earn a bare living for the American mind is thoroughly imbued with the idea that a man is entitled to all be can earn and the suggestion that he must be content with such part of his earnings as tho government govern-ment sees fit to permit him to have is utterly ut-terly intolerable to the average American Besides if free sugar is a good thing for us why not free coats also 1 Is there greater danger of our wearing too fine I a coat or too many of them than there is of our eating too much sugar 1 Mr MeI KINLETS argument will be laughed down In showing that cheap sugar is a blessing be inadvertently shows that cheap coats would be not less beneficial The fact is that Mr McKiKLEr knows that he cannot delude his constituents much longer on the sugar question for some of the tax has been removed from L sugar and as soon as that part of the law goes into effect every workingman will I discover that his days labor will purchase a third more sugar than it did while the high sugar tax existed No sophistry can ever explain away this palpable fact as Mr McKINLEY knows only too well hence he champions free sugar but affects to deride de-ride cheap coats fie pretends to believe that if we could I buy cheap coats our wages would go down and at the same time he asserts that if we could buy cheap sugar our wages would go up Curious paradox Why does ho promulgate such nonsense Simply because be-cause he knows that the benefits of cheap sugar are to be given a trial which means that they will at once be apparent in the increased purchasing power of every mans labor as compared with sugar It will be no longer possible to fool the wage earner in regard to sugar Obviously then the course of wisdom on the part of ME McKiXLcr will be to admit the benefits bene-fits of cheap sugar while denying the benefits bene-fits of cheap coats Heretofore a bushel of wheat would buy only from six to ten pounds of sugar hereafter here-after it will buy from twelve to twenty pounds No talk about pauper labor will ever affect that eloquent fact The farmer may believe all sorts of other absurdities but when once the purchasing power of a bushel of wheat has thus been brought home to him he will never again be deluded delud-ed into thinking cheap sugar lowers his wages But Mr McKinley and his brother protectionists pro-tectionists have a deep and abiding faith in the stupidity of Republican wage earners earn-ers and expect them to believe that what is an unalloyed blessing in the shape of cheap sugar would be an unmitigated curse in the shape of cheap coats Will they succeed in deluding their dupes in the face of this grotesque paradox of coats and sugarl Certainly they will i nine out often of-ten cases But the tenth man will see through the game and will refuse to be fleeced with his own consent and approval It is to catch this tenth man that tariff reformers re-formers explain and labor as the others would vote for the Republican part though it should slay them And there is nothing in history more touching apart from its sheer absurdity than the wail of the pauperized farmers in defense of the party that is destroying them But were it not that this slow starvation brings some of them to their senses then the friends of reform would surely lose all faith in human intelligence and abandon a supposed government of tho people to the unmolested undisputed sway of plutocrats and their political agents |