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Show OUR TARIFF AGAIN In a rcent speech at Allentown, Pennsylvania, Secretary of Labor Davis declared that the American protective tariff is the bulwark bul-wark between the American workingman and idleness and is the chief factor in this country's prosperity. "What would you rather have," he asked, "the men of Europe doing the work, or the men of the United States? If we had no tariff the factories of other countries would run and ours would have to be closed. We must think in terms of America." Here is the tariff situation, as it affects the workingman, in a nutshell. It is not a question of reducing his wages but of facing a loss of job and the soup kitchen or starvation. Eventually if free trade were continued, it might be possible for manufacturing to be resumed in America on the basis of European wages and European conditions. But nobody in America wants such wages paid or such living conditions endured . At first at any rate would come idleness in the factories and general stagnation . But the farmer is directly interested, too . Lowering the tariff tar-iff would not help him because he is now paying no tariff on commodities com-modities used exclusively by himself. It would hurt him both directly di-rectly and indirectly. Indirectly because his great home market for provisions would be destroyed and directly because he would face competition in certain agricultural commodities from Cuba, from Mexico, from China, from Canada, from South America and Spain and Italy . And the farmer knows this. He realizes it in the South and in the Southwest as well as in the North and Northwest . That is why the tariff is no longer regarded as t sectional issue . Growers in Florida and Texas need it as well as the farmers of Minnesota and Utah . |