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Show LABOR1NGMEN AND THE TARIFF. The miners, the wool men. the stock men, the beet sugar raisers, and the working men, and merchants and professional men who lean upon the proteoted industries for their profits, the railroad rail-road men that receive so much traffic from all the protected industries should be reminded that If there is any clear policy outlined in the Democratic Demo-cratic platform, and given expression to by Democratic Demo-cratic speakers and by the press of the party, it is that protection is a robbery that they will do away with whenever they obtain the power. This is the one thing that the party has saved from the wreck of the Confederacy; the one thing that they all agree upon, however much they may quarrel quar-rel on other policies. Not only are they determined deter-mined uron it, but to cripple where they cannot kill, they favor a reciprocity law which would neutralize neu-tralize the protective tariff law, but also aim to cripple Jt another way by paying out (or remitting) remit-ting) the customs to American ships that bring in foreign goods and wares. It should be frequently referrpd to not only to koop men In business posted post-ed on their designs, but to make clear how false Is the affeated sympathy which the Democratic party par-ty professes for the laboring men of this country, coun-try, for their purpose is to place the working men of the United States on an exact equality with the myriads of workers in Europe who are glad to get 50 per cent of what American -workingmen get. This is true of skilled workers; when it comes to the simpler labor of the unskilled those wretches beyond the sea are glad to get from $2 to $3 per week. Laboring men should fully understand that this policy originated in the south when the aristocracy was living on the proceeds of unpaid labor, and by men who had a contempt for work ap.d working men. Slavery has passed away, but this heresy still lives. There is less excuse for It than ever before, for the country has repeatedly tried the experiment and always with the same results. It has never failed of draining the country of money; of turning out thousands and tens of thousands thou-sands and hundreds of thousands of men idle, of causing unmeasured distress and, by the drain of money reducing the value of very form of property. prop-erty. Mr. Bryan understands the silver question perfectly. per-fectly. No one explained more lucidly than did he In 189G that the depression and the fall of property was due to the draining of the country of money, that values could never be restored nor the depression lifted until the needed volume of money could be restored. That It came through the famine of the outside world instead of silver does not matter, the principle was right, it Is one that every writer on political economy endorses as an inviolable law. But Mr. Bryan at once seems to lose his reasoning rea-soning powers when It comes to the discussing of the tariff. He knows that a tariff for revenue only would drain the country of monev In a year, reduce the value of all forms of property and fill the land with idle men unless they would work for the. wages paid In southern "Europe, but it does not matter. The free-trade was inherited by Tiim I ' I from some ancestor who belioved that John C. i Calhoun could not be wrong and with Mr. Bryan It is a birthmark which he can never wash off. But I laboring men who want living wages Should not be deceived. Their great enemy is the one that professes to be their greatest friend. i |
