Show A PRACTICAL TARIFF SOLID FACTS VERSUS democratic FREE TRADE generalities the Almis slon of general walker a 0 free rree trader once the census superintendent that the tariff creates and high kates rates of wages it is 13 noticeable that the editorial pages of democratic and free trade newspapers seldom give facts and figures to back up what they say about the workings of the tariff they blaze away with reckless dogmatic assertions like this the price of jiving has gone up but the price of labor nas has either remained stationary or been painfully depressed if you want a rich class and a poor class if you want a moneyed aristocracy at one end and a horde of stolid laborers at the other end you will support the republican ticket these are the words of the new york herald they occur in and represent a drift of a leading editorial occupying the most conspicuous column of the page which that journal uses when it thinks it is thinking there is not a solitary figure about prices or wages past or present from the beginning of the article to the end but it is twice asserted that the laborers ers throughout the country pay more for the necessaries of life and get less for their work not the laborers here and there but the laborers throughout the country not that they pay more for one or two necessaries of life we have seen no proof anywhere that even that is true but for the necessaries of life in general not that wages hava been cut down here and there but where a business was in a peculiar condition but laborers throughout the country got less for their work we appeal to the experience of every laborer who reads this article on that point the press published on sunday oct 4 1891 the results of a canvass made by its own reporters among the dealers in hi cutlery earthenware tin plates rope dress goods serges and flannels carpets linen table cloths claths towels shawls woolens hats blankets mens garments shoes and tobacco which showed that in the year following the enactment of the mckinley bill the prices of these articles bad had either gone down or remained virtually unchanged the american economist at the same time published a table of seventy two X Itea ding articles of daily use including in addition to the above such implements of labor as axes crowbars files handsaws hand saws mowing machines nails plows rakes re apers binders shovels I 1 spades wash boilers tubs and wheelbarrows with the prices as modified ilithe year that had just passed there were 68 58 increases in duties 59 decreases in prices 13 12 articles marked no change in prices and I 1 increase namely in the price of pearl bartons bat tons which bad had increased from ily to 13 cents a dozen there are bone buttons and wooden buttons and brass buttons and cloth buttons and china buttons and rubber buttons but this two cents increase in the price of pearl buttons 4 haa has been bean figuring as a sore oppression of the laboring man ever since it is a highly favored fact fait in that it is admitted into free tr trade do editorials where no other specific fact is allowed to come como certainly not the tho fact that the n number umber of pearl button factories increased from 17 to 77 the advertising columns of the press and other daily papers the market reports of the trade papers and th the 0 business news of the country in general show that the campaign bluster of the free trade and democratic journals is the merest demagogy and reckless disregard of truth only yesterday it was announced that eight of the largest wholesale dry goods firms in this city and thirteen of tho leading dry goods jobbing houses in chilade philadelphia alphia who virtually control the trade of these two cities had signed an agreement not to give such large discounts for cash as heretofore this was the reason given competition had gradually forced discounts up so high that is cash prices BO so low that it finally became a question of combining or quitting competition in selling dry goods is it the result of largo large and widespread home production and protective duties have caused this largo home production just as soon as anybody exacts exorbitant prices for an article of protected manufacture somebody else elso goes into that branch of manufacture and cuts under the high prices that is the way protection works invariably outside of the vague and hazy generalities which free trade orators and democratic scribblers scribble rs evolve out of their inner consciousness without taking the trouble to investigate the facts it is the tariff that opens factory doors and turns factory wheels whenever it Is high enough and as for its effect on wages general francis A walker a free trader who was superintendent of census in 1880 thus contradicts the campaign demagogues in his latest work on political economy advanced course section it la is perfectly true as the protectionist asserts that a tariff of customs duties upon foreign goods imported into new countries tends to create and maintain high rates of wages in the factory industries dus tries and if in the factory industries it m muff ase affect wages in other inta industries anstres favorably from the very fact that I 1 it t reduces the general supply of unemployed labor president harrison well said that tho free trade politicians studied maxims not markets they seem to know nothing about the markets for either goods or labor general walker as a census S superintendent and statistician studied facts and markets that was why ho had to admit that protection tended to raise wag wages and to keep them up new york vork press |