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Show ymm the tariff doesnt hurt. The St. Louis Mirror declare! that "the cruelty of privileged taxation ia infinitely worse than that . of war. The latter i sporadic, and occasional ; the former ia epidemioaiMr perpetual, A -wodioum-vf phlebotomy is not so bad as taxing people into ,: poverty, vice and crime, and that is what all taxation taxa-tion docs that is levied upon man's productive labor." As an abstract proposition that may be all true, but as meant to be applied by the Mirror we fear the factg do not bear him out. He is evidently one ' of those old time free traders. . When the tariff , makes the cloth in a suit of clothes cost $2.30 more than it would without , the tariff, . ilie Mirror is '' ready to declare that the poor are oppressed, that just that kind of wort leads to poverty, "vice and crime. This matter has been threshed over and over for three score years and ten in the United States, but there is one truth about it which men who feel as docs the Mirror have never yet beer) able to explain, ex-plain, which is that if through the tariff a man is able to curn $3 a day' whereas before it was levied he could cam nothing, and it is possible fur him to . have the money to buy the suit of clothes when before be-fore he got the work he could not buy them, how in lie oppressed 1 To bring the matter more clearly horn , where . ix. the poor nu.n better off, in western Missouri and northern ArkaiiHas or in Masxachuscttst Western .Missouri and Arkansas have millions of acres of fertile land, MasMachusetts has been a poor agricultural agricul-tural country from the first; but two or three poor ' men can get work in Massachusetts where one cannot can-not get it in Arkansas. The advantago of the, Missouri Mis-souri and Arkansas mar) is that if he cannot get ' Work his heart is not broken, and he js in the same fix as the. Arkansas man was forty years ago, when, as the story goes, a northern man spett the night with hiin. He had his supper and hia breakfast, neither of which was very fine, but both of which were tendered with all southern hospitality. In th morning he said to his host : .... . ."You have a lovely country here, but what do you do when you have to ha,ve a little money f" "What do we do when we have to have money!" "Tea." , "When we can't get along without itt When we must have it!" - v .' '' j ; "Yes." ' . ." - '! . . I "Well," said the Arkansas man, with engaging frankness, "wo tell the fellow he will have to wait." ' - ' . There the protective tariff doea not worry the people at all, beeanse the clothes they wer they make mostly themselves, and if the tax is too heavy on whisky, they make, the whisky, and give themselves them-selves credit for the tax. There is not much vice , ant! crime down there because, the people won't permit the crimes and they are not bothered much with the vices. ' ' It is all a reminder of the story of the clergyman clergy-man of New York of whom the ladies of his congregation con-gregation Were very fond. They secretly raised fund and when the hot weather was coming on, carried it to him and told him thst they had noted hiw hard he had worked through the year and they had brought him a little money that he might take a long two months' rest to be better prepared for , the work of the coming season. He took the money, called his physician, asked him where he had better bet-ter go for a good long rest, and the physician advised ad-vised him to seek the Ozark mountain region in southwestern Missouri, where tho air was perfectly pure, where there lived a quiet, hospitable people, where all of the excitement and clamor of a great city could bs forgotten. The minister went away arid returned in four weeks and When asked why his vacation was so short be answered that he found the country in the Ozarks all right, he found the people just as described, a kindly, hospitable, quiet , race ; that he found accommodations in a comfortable comforta-ble home; that the first week they went out and shot, a wild hog and had pork three times a day at their meals. The next Monday morning they killed a sheep and they had mutton every day during that week roast mutton, mutton chops, mutton stew, mutton every way. The third week they killed a calf and that week it was nothing but veal. The next Monday morning they killed a man, and then he came home. . |