Every day the signs of the times indicat...

Every day the signs of the times indicate more strongly that the party of great moral ideas will have about all it can attend to here in Michigan in keeping within control the fierce flames of faction which threaten to devour party supremacy in the state. The fight among our republican brethren for the leadership of the machine promises to be of the bitterest kind. Those who haveundertaken the task of butting McMillen and Rich off the track have a large contract on their hands. Still no one doubts the nerve of the men who have joined the opposition forces under the leadership of Pingree. We shall see what we shall see. The political couch of his excellency, John T. Rich, is not one of roses these days. The disaffection of the Scandinavians of the upper península on account of the turning down of Jochim and Hambitzer, upon whom the party has always depended for its majority across the straits, together with the disturbances caused by the faction Captains, Pingree, Luce, Turner, et al., is not calculated to induce sweet and refreshing political rest. Farmer Luce is grieved because farmer Rich, whom the said horny handed Gilead agriculturist helped to boost up the political ladder some years ago, forgot his old patron in naming a United States senator. Luce wil!, therefore, attach his politieel fortunes to the tail of the Pingree kite. Well, the staid farmer will need pretty steady nerves if he expects to accompany the pyrotechnic mayor on his political gyrations. The recent utterances of Mayor Pingree while in New York, whatever their significance to the party whose label he wears, show him to be an intelligent student of existing conditions and their causes. While it is a great surprise to find this professed republican laying down and vouching for such sound democratie doctrine, this fact but adds potency to his words. His speech was a scathmgassault upon abuses in government, especially upon monopolies, trusts and combines, and incidentally perhaps upon certain party associates for whom he is said to lack that warmth of affection always supposed to exist among members of the g. o. p. Among the many good things that he said, the following is perhaps the best. 'The trouble is not so mueh to find good men who eannot be used bv designing persons as it is to arouse people to an understanding that the remedy for the abuses in government is in their own hands. I ani a firm believer in the people. Those who want good government are in the majority in every community. The same trouble exists in municipal government which does in state and national. It is the tyranny of the powerful few over the many weak by means of which the few rob the many - suck their lifeblood- live on them. The few combine themselves under various names -rings, corporations, trusts, or what not. Thev buy common councils and legislatures, and even suborn courts of justice to accomplish their ends." The herring democrats in the senate who have so basely betrayed the party and caused the failure to carry out platform pledges, try to excuse their treachery by claiming that it is necessary at least to have sufficient protection on our producís to cover the difference between wages here and in Europe. They insist for instance that we must have a protective duty on our iron or our iron industry would be irretrievably ruined. They say that with the wages paid here it would be impossible to compete with the pauper labor of other countries. The dishonesty and hypocracy of their position, however, is made manifest from the following figures which show the value of the iron and steel and the manufactures thereof exported during the past fiscal year: Pigiron $ 336,838 Band hoop and scroll 7,867 Bar 8,656 Car wheels loti,403 CastinKS, ii. e. s r70,841 C'utlery 148,550 Flrearme 723,271 Ingots, bars aiid rods 22,201 Locks, hinges and other liuilders' hardware 2,648,919 Machinery 10,467.091 Nails and spikes, cut 330,554 Nails and spikes, wire, eto 158,093 Platee and sheets, iron 65,768 Platee and sheets, steel 20,459 E'rinting presses , 205.S05 Railroad bars. iron 11,113 Railroad bars, steel 471,230 ! Saws and tools 1,902,433 Scales and balances 400,430 Sewing machines _ 2,476,446 Fire eiigines 75 Loeomotiyes 1,71)4,7 W St ationary engines 254,398 Boiiei-s and parts of engines 607,758 Stoves, ranges and parts of 216,403 Wire 1,189,219 Varlous other.. 4,896.401' The above table of statistics shows conclusively that our manufacturers not only can but do compete with the manufacturers of other countries in their own markets. Nor is this competition confined to the above producís but includes a great variety of others as well. Now, if our manufacturers can ship their products thousands of miles and still be able to undersell foreign manufacturers, whose products are produced with so-called pauper labor, it is downright dishonesty to claim that protection is necessary in order to enable our manufacturers to pay the wages they do, and still sell their products at a profit in our ■ own markets. Our labor saving machinery is the latest and best, our labor posesses as high a degree of skill as any in the world, and sidering the product produced the labor cost is the least. The claim that protection is necessary, therefore, on account of the rate of wages paid here is manifestly [untrue, and is set up to deceive workingmen. Protection is laid for the benefit of the trusts and combines, and not for the purpose of keeping up American wages.