The Great Army Of Unemployed

Mr. Powderly, ex-mayor of Serán ton, Penn., and one of the best known among the leaders in the labor organization of the United States, in an article written for the April issue of the North American Beview said: " The number will not fall short of 2,000,000." This army of the nnemployed, at the average earnings of those engaged in manufacturing industries in 1880, means a loss in wages of about 12,000,000 a week. This alone is enough to cause business stagnation and depresslon. But the question arises why are the people idle? Why is this vast anny of producers doing nothing? The answer is plain. They are out of employment because there are no available markets for the commodities their labor might produce. The home market is glutted, and the country being hedged about by the tarriff barriera agaist trade no other markets are open to the products of their labor, nor can they be under our present tariff system In the first place the onerous tariff tax on raw materials so enhances tbe coat of manufactured products as to exclude them from the world's markets. Workers must remain idle unless the gooda their labor produces can be sold and that they oan not be sold in the United States is evident from the overstocked con dit ion of the home market. Foreign markets must be had or the army of unemployed will inevitably increase. The first step towarda obtaining such markets must be the removal of the tariff obstructions to foreign trade. To this complexion the question has come at last. Many of our intelligent manufacturera realize it . As a committee representing muny manufacturing interesta said in a petition presented to the last congress, praying for free raw materials, " the manufacturera of the United States are in a position where they must command larger markets. The markets of the world alone are sufficient to give relief to their intensified means of production. Glutted by over-production and under-consumption their narrow markets are supplement ed by the auction room and the sheríff's sale. All the high wages paid to our workmen, held up as a cause for leaving alone the existing tariff, do ot bring money into their pouches or oread in their baskets, so long as they have no work to perform. They will re main idle a large part of the year, if they do not get free raw materials to work with. Free raw materials fcive oheap subsidiary materials to all ere and will open up the world's trade to them, make the United States the world's factory, the ocean onoe more a highway of the United States, and the stars and strípes swept by the breeze of the seas of the world. We oopy the following from that able and influential Oreenbaek paper, the Grand Rapids Leader: Intelligent, shrewd, vigorous politioal leadership we believe iu, and we would concede it support as loyally as we would ;he comniander of au army. But we do not consider the absolute control of offices through a subservient President or a machine convention the most impor;aut part of the such a leadership. We are opposd to abject obedience to any one man in party affairs, from the town caucus to the senator. We do not con;end that suoh a rule is unknown. We are perfectly aware that in the history of ■lio party now ruling this state and recently in power at Washington we have aad precedente for this claim. In the careers of Chandler in this State, Logan u Illinois, Blaine in Maine, Morton in [ndiana and Cameron in Pennsylvania, we have had notorious precedente of ;his kind, but they all became odious ind flnally wrecked their party. We tiope never to see those precedents folowed by any party to which we belong. They are dangerous and cornipting.