The Cortland
Democrat, Friday, July 6, 1888.
That Irrepressible
Conflict.
The
editorial talent of the Standard has appeared for some time to be
limited to stupidity, mendacity, and vituperation, if billingsgate and personal
abuse can be dignified by such terms. In an editorial entitled "A Sample Free Trader'' the
common place insipidity, impotence and flatulence of its columns was relieved
somewhat by a rare combination of these qualities. Unable to cope with the
arguments and proofs adduced to show that many independent Republicans are
opposed to the monopoly upholding tariff and free whiskey policy promulgated in
the Chicago platform and advocated by a majority of the Republican members of
Congress, though several Republicans have openly repudiated this policy in
their speeches delivered in the House of Representatives and have taken sides
with the Democratic tariff reformers for a lower rate of taxation upon the
necessaries of life and the raw materials used by manufacturers, the editor of
the Standard resorts to abuse, as usual, when worsted in an argument.
The fact that there is an
''Irrepressible conflict" in the republican party, over the monopolistic
free whisky tendencies of the Republican party, irritates "Brother Bill" [William Clark,
proprietor and editor of the Cortland
Standard—CC editor] and he denounces the fact that the Republicans are in
conflict among themselves over the tariff question, as a ''glaring falsehood,''
notwithstanding the notorious fact that the Republican minority in Congress
were unable to agree upon a tariff bill to be put forward, not to become a law
but to defeat the Mills bill, only because of this conflict among them and the further
fact that the most influential Republican organs of the northwest, headed by
the Chicago Tribune, have been persistent in the advocacy of a reduction
of the tariff duties on the necessaries of life and the raw materials used by
manufacturers, and in denouncing the monopolies created by the present tariff
and opposed to making whiskey and tobacco free. The N. Y. Times, N. Y. Evening Post, Springfield Republican
and Boston Herald, have taken the side of tariff reform in this
controversy and they are, or were before '"Brother Bill" read them
out of the party, Republican papers.
According to "Brother
Bill" there is no "Irrepressible conflict" in the party, because
all have been kicked out but the monopolists and free whiskeyites. If this is
true, he is correct, and we don't care to wrangle over it so long as the
"mugwumps" won't vote to perpetuate a tariff or surplus at the expense
of the business interests of the country. That is the important part of the
subject; whether mugwumps are Republicans or not, is of little consequence.
But "Brother Bill"
waxes indignant over the suggestion, mildly put, that his editorial inspiration
is drawn from the dull and ponderous English aping columns of the N. Y. Tribune.
We state it to be the observation of those who have inspected the columns
of the Cortland Standard and N. Y. Tribune for the past six
months at least, that the ideas and the modes of expressing them are strikingly
similar and of the same import in both papers.
Of course an experienced
plagiarist wouldn't think of appropriating his editorials bodily word for word
from the Tribune. But to cast the same
metal over again does not transmute it into metal of another kind. We propose
to "Brother Bill" to leave this issue out to his readers to decide whether
the N. Y. Tribune is inspired by the Cortland Standard or vice versa.
The Standard says: "Perhaps Independent or some of his
sympathizers can explain why, with wealthy manufacturers in both countries,
England with free trade has idleness and pauperism and America with protection
has good wages and plenty of work." Poor benighted brother Bill, the state
of facts you assume is true
in this question have no real existence outside of your own addled pate. You
should read the newspapers and they will inform you that there now is hundreds
of thousands of employees in various occupations forced into idleness by
lockouts and strikes brought about by the millionaire proprietors of monopoly
tariff-sustained industries in various parts of the United States. Steel and iron
workers, glass makers, carpet weavers, coal miners, and until quite recently—coke
burners and many other protected trades.
The pauperism and misery of some
of these American workmen is not exceeded by anything in England or any other
part of Europe, and their condition would be much worse but for the aid
extended by Knights of Labor and kindred organizations. Again when compared
with what they each produce, the day wages of an American laborer are no
greater than an English laborer. Statistics show that three Americans do about
the same amount of work on an average as five Englishmen. Again the population
of the United States is 14 to the square mile while in England it is 289 to the
square mile and land in England ought to be and is, higher than it is in
America in about the proportion that 289 is to 14, a condition of things which
alone and of itself, would account for a much greater excess of pauperism than
actually or apparently exists in England as compared with the United States.
Yet the population become one quarter as dense here as it is there, with our
tariff favored monopolies and more than half our population would either be or
at once become paupers; for wages would go down as the population increased and
in the same proportion, because it is the excess in the supply of laborers
which diminishes wages.
The law of supply and demand
alone controls prices of labor and everything else and our tariff protected
monopolists have filled the places of native Americans driven out by these
greedy cormorants with imported laborers from Europe, and too frequently these
have proven to be turbulent anarchists, totally unsuited to appreciate or enjoy
free American institutions.
These evils are clearly the
result of our monopoly-creating, surplus-producing tariff. But one of the most
obvious reasons why the condition of working men in America is better than it
is in Europe is that the American working man is more intelligent, more prudent
and provident, more skillful, more industrious and sober and better qualified
to understand and combat with greedy monopolists and protective humbugs. The better
condition of the American workingman is due mainly to the fact that he is a
better man than his English brother, and not in the tariff or any other
iniquitous tax, in spite of which he has attained his enviable condition.
And these, brother Bill, are
some of the reasons why the condition of the working men in America is better
than in England, and why the reason you assigned for it, is a hindrance and not
an assistance to the American laborer. Perhaps brother Bill or some other
apologist for the free whisky and monopoly breeding tariff can tell us why it
is that the wages of German laborers, under the influence of a high protective
tariff, is much less than the English laborer earns under a free trade policy and
also why the coal miners, carpet weavers, iron and steel makers whose trades
are protected by the American tariff are much below those earned by carpenters,
masons, machinists and the like whose trades are not thus protected?
Free trade is indispensable to
densely populated countries like England and Belgium, for such populations must
produce a large surplus and must find a market for it beyond their own borders,
and to do this trade must be encouraged not hindered by tariffs and other
burdens and encumbrances.
The Mills Bill now pending in
Congress is Democratic tariff reform and nothing else, and it provides for an
average duty of over 40 per cent, on all dutiable articles. No one has yet claimed
that it will not produce sufficient revenue to meet the legitimate expenses of the
government.
If American manufacturers cannot
compete in home markets with foreign producers with an advantage of 40 per cent
and cost of transportation in their favor; if a profit of 40 per cent over
foreign producers besides freight, is not sufficient to maintain them, they
deserve to fail. And as this 40 percent comes out of American consumers who
outnumber the producers more than ten to one, it strikes us that the [masses]
of our people ought not to be compelled to contribute to the profits of a few
manufacturers, more than 40 per cent on the cost of their products, and that this contribution can only be
justified on the ground that the government needs the money thus contributed
for its necessary expenses.
In view of the foregoing,
Brother Bill risks his reputation as a discreet and prudent romancer, and a
careful campaign falsifier by the oft repeated statement that the Mills bill is
a free trade measure. Better tell us the Democrats are determined to pay the
Rebel debt and revamp some of the ancient bloody shirt fables you used to
publish in the palmy days of the G. O. P. Tell us the Democrats are bound to
pay the Southern slave-holders the value of their emancipated slaves; tell us
that the wicked Democrats have conspired to blow up all the Custom Houses in the
land with dynamite and abolish all the collectorships and other fat offices if
Cleveland is re-elected, publish most any kind of a lie that will disparage Democrats,
but avoid such idiotic fibs as
that the Mills Bill is a free trade measure. That bears the evidence of
falsehood too plainly upon its
face and can't deceive anybody.
INDEPENDENT. [pen name]
From Everywhere.
The Phelps Citizen is
advertising for sale the accounts of several dead beat subscribers.
Mrs. Margaret Murphey died at
Fairfield, Herkimer county, Wednesday, aged 110 years.
Over 3,000 quarts of milk are
taken daily at Chenango Forks for shipment to New York city.
For every missionary of this
Cross we send to heathen lands, we send 70,000 gallons of rum.
More than 30,000 Italians have
immigrated to this country since January 1st, and more than 60 per cent of them
have taken up their abode in New York city.
The Erie Railroad has in its
employ 18,355 people, and last year paid them $9,504,518. The Erie has 485
engines, 285 passenger cars and 29,716 box, flat and coal cars.
In May 73,770 immigrants landed
at New York city. Altogether the arrivals for the first five months of the year
were 187,139 or over 21,000 more than the number during the corresponding
period of 1887.
The house of one Mrs. Champlain,
situated in the gulf, near the Sherman school house, and about two miles north
of Summer Hill, was burned to the ground early Monday morning. The fire was
undoubtedly of incendiary origin. Indeed the inhabitants hint that this means
was taken to rid themselves of obnoxious neighbors. As one irate female expressed it, "She was living with her
fourth man and had three different litters of children in the asylum [poor
house]."
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