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Show j if PROTECTION TO THE LABORER. ! 1 The Chicago Herald of the 15th inst., I ' in commenting ujon the President's mes- I ' sage, has the following to say concerning j the benefits of protection to the laboring I , ,' man:.. j j ; j But for the absurd pretense that tariffs are i laid to promote the welfare of labor they t j could not exist for a month. Their strength j ;f with the people lies in the fact that the in- ' terests long favored by the system have i ii carefully educated the ignorant and unthink- I ; : ing to the belief that they were the benefi- S J ciaries of the monopolies created.whereas it is i susoeptible of proof that the workingman de- l ; rives no advantage from thein whatever. ;, The article which the manufacturer has to . "3 . . ' sell is protected, but the labor which the i '-( ' mechanio or workingman has to sell is not i ; protected. He competes with the "pauper" I , labor of the world right here on American " I soil for the right to earn his bread. In ad- ditjon to this he frequently finds that the 1 corporations which are so deeply interested ' i in his welfare import cheap workers by the I i ' thousand to glut the labor market and make j WRges low. t ! . , . The protective tariff never benefitted an f j i American workingman a dollar's worth. It i j ' j- has turned the energies of some of them j j ! into channels which they might not of their i j own aooord have entered, but the result is : ; 1 ; seen in the distress continually witnessed in y, the coal and iron regions. It "is of no more - 1 V value to the workingman than the laws of I , : Timbuctoo. Its absolute repeal would not ; j i create so much distress among the laboring men as one monopoly lockout for the pur- ! ; pose of manufacturing a scarcity does. It t is capital's device maintained under the color i ot friendliness for labor. That is unanswerable, and could the i ; laboringmen who are imposed upon j y by specious theories and gross flattery ' it ' but recognize the truth of this, their lot i I would be far different from what it is. j; , The fact can never be too' well j( known nor too widely circulated, i I that protection is the. friend of j the capitalist and the enemy of the work- ing man. If the result of foreign skilled ' : . r labor is heavily taxed for the benefit of J '' the American manufacturer, then the . foreign skilled laborer who comes to ; the United States to compete with ' the skilled laborer of America should be j 1 ' taxed Mhen he gets here the same as . j though he had remained in his own coun- : i I try and had continued to send the result ) ' of his labor to this country. If protection i ; is beneficial to the workingman and is J ; solely for his. good, it should be made so V complete that competition from abroad ; would be absolutely prohibited. It is i :; I I . : said that a tariff raises the price of labor to the extent of the tariff duty imposed im-posed upon the article. If such were the case, then it would be the easiest matter in the world to enhance the price of any article to any amount. If protection benefits bene-fits the laboring man as it is claimed, and that it is chiefly for his benefit, the question ques-tion necessarily arises whether the con-, sumer is not entitled to as much consid-ation consid-ation as the producer. The boycotting movements of such organizations as the Knights of Labor are but the doctrines of protection applied to the labor market, for these organizations say to employers that they can only purchase labor in a particular market; and that is just what a protective tariff says to the consumer. |